Milking the weeds for all they're worth

Unbeknownst to me previously, today is "World Photo Day." Let me wish you a happy one. Here's my favorite "world photo."

Earthrise is a photograph of the Earth taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968,
during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell declared it
"the most influential environmental photograph ever taken."

Back on Earth, I'm missing a good photo [see below] of the section of our field that's full of what I think are common milkweed plants, none of which have monarch caterpillars feeding on them, nor did any display flowers this Summer. Today's continuing rain severely limits my interest in  heading to the field to get a better shot. Plus, I'm still drying out from walking all four dogs in yesterday's downpours.

While I was getting warm and dry again, it took me several searches to find the following milkweed description in a USDA Plant Guide:

"Both seedlings and cuttings will usually bloom in their second year, although cuttings will occasionally bloom during their first year (Kindscher 1992)."

field with Black-eyed Susan and milkweed

Photo by J. Harrington

There's lots of information on propagating and planting and growing "pollinator-friendly" plants, including various milkweeds. Little of it mentions a lack of flowers the first year.

You might be able to notice some of the plants I'm talking about in the lower right quadrant of the above photo. For the moment, I'm interpreting the USDA quote to mean that I have a field full of first year plants (seedlings, since I know we didn't do cuttings) and should hope for blooms next year. Alternatively, I have a field full of some rare, weird plant that looks like a common milkweed but doesn't bloom. I'm open to alternative explanations. Have any? 

Milkweed

Philip Levine

Remember how unimportant
they seemed, growing loosely
in the open fields we crossed
on the way to school. We
would carve wooden swords
and slash at the luscious trunks
until the white milk started
and then flowed. Then we'd
go on to the long day
after day of the History of History
or the tables of numbers and order
as the clock slowly paid
out the moments. The windows
went dark first with rain
and then snow, and then the days,
then the years ran together and not
one mattered more than
another, and not one mattered.

Two days ago I walked
the empty woods, bent over,
crunching through oak leaves,
asking myself questions
without answers. From somewhere
a froth of seeds drifted by touched
with gold in the last light
of a lost day, going with
the wind as they always did.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

The buck[s] stop[s] here

Midday, midweek, cool, rainy, kind of gloomy. I was at a meeting in Minneapolis all morning and had another appointment this afternoon. I wasn't sure when or how I'd get a chance to write something for My Minnesota. I needed something to cheer me up. I got it them. As I looked out the picture window, I saw a young fork horn buck, still in velvet, poking along the edge of the woods. I got my camera, took some pictures and felt considerably cheerier than I had fifteen minutes before. Then I looked again, wondering how he had moved to the front of the apple trees without my noticing. Then I saw that this wasn't the first buck, this was another one with slightly smaller antlers, also in velvet. That's more bucks at one time than I've seen in my entire life before this. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

fork horn #1 in velvet

Photo by J. Harrington

fork horn #2 in velvet

Photo by J. Harrington

Waumandee

By Mark Wunderlich 

A man with binoculars   

fixed a shape in the field   

and we stopped and saw   

the albino buck browsing   

in the oats—white dash   

on a page of green,   

flick of a blade   

cutting paint to canvas.   

It dipped its head   

and green effaced the white,   

bled onto the absence that   

the buck was—animal erasure.   

Head up again, its sugar legs   

pricked the turf, pink   

antler prongs brushed at flies.   

Here in a field was the imagined world   

made visible—a mythical beast   

filling its rumen with clover   

until all at once it startled,   

flagged its bright tail—   

auf Wiedersehen, surrender—   

and leapt away—   

a white tooth   

in the closing mouth of the woods.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.