Milkweed pods #phenology

robust, healthy milkweed

Photo by J. Harrington

A couple of days ago I finished reading Fred Pearce's The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation. Many, perhaps most, of his propositions make sense to me, but I want to think some more and probably buy a paperback version that I can annotate before I declare myself. This morning I returned a borrowed hardcover copy to my local library. The blessing of having a library copy available was a response to having skimmed some reviews, and being uncertain if I'd end up hurling across the room a poorly developed and badly written apologia for benign neglect as a conservation strategy. Nope. Pearce makes at lease a half-way decent case. I'm still not sure he makes enough of a case. His book, and its premise, are temporarily lodged in my category of necessary, but not sufficient. We'll get to more about that in a later post. Pearce seems too accepting of non-natives while many conservationists want to eradicate those that weren't here before Columbus. I want to see, as a basis for a management strategy, more assessments of the role and ecological niche an invasive fits and whether it is extirpating native species. Anyhow, for now I want to get back to the point I wandered from at the beginning of the paragraph, that returning the library book gave me the opportunity to take a close look at the rain garden that lines the north and west sides of the library building.

purple cone flowers in rain garden

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning the garden was full of purple cone flowers and florescent pink phlox and blazing star and some yellow flowers I didn't recognize. The milkweed at the rain garden's edges is much taller and more robust looking than the scruffy, dust-covered stems and leaves in our sand-plain field. Its seed pods are among the biggest I've ever seen. I noticed though, that not all the plants had developed pods. Later, when walking one of the dogs, I did notice some puny, developing seed pods on our local milkweed plants, but not even on most of them. From what I read, seed pods don't develop until the third year of a milkweed's growth. That would explain a lot, or at least why some plants have pods and others don't. Good to remember, but I had foolishly thought I was home free remembering the difference between annuals and perennials. Sigh!

Milkweed

James Wright

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

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

It's August #phenology

This month we should have more than 400 wildflowers in bloom. The Sturgeon (full) Moon will be August 18. The local corn I've noticed is all tasseled and has emerged silk. The neighborhood deer fly population is mercifully thinner. I hope there's not another brood waiting to hatch. Weather is warm, humid, sort of sullen and thundery from time to time. I haven't yet noticed any pods on the local milkweed plants, but I haven't been looking carefully either. Monarch, swallowtail and red admiral butterflies are visiting muddy driveway puddles and the remnants of July's blooms.

Whitetail fawn and black-eye susans

Photo by J. Harrington

Whitetail fawns are coming along nicely but haven't yet shed their spots. Time for them to nibble some grasses and forms and sniff the black-eyed susans while we humans gather sumac seeds and look for ripening blackberries, but slowly, easily. It's August, Summer's winding down, and the livin' is easy. Time to just enjoy what's been given us.

Come Back to Tell Us

Matthew Thorburn

Dusk in August—
which means nearly
nine o’clock here, deep
in the heart of central
Jersey—and the deer
step out to graze
the backyards. They tear
each yellowy red
tulip cup, munch up
rhododendrons
and azaleas. Fifty
years of new houses
have eaten into
their woodland, leaving
only this narrow strip
of trees along the trickly
stream that zigzags
between Route 9
and Lily’s mom’s
backyard. The deer rise
from the mist, hooves
clicking on asphalt, a doe
and a buck, his antlers
like a chandelier.
Sometimes a doe and two
fawns. Or else we see
just the white flags
of their tails bobbing away
into the dark. In theory
the DNR should come
catch them, let them go
where it’s still
forest, still possible to live
as they were meant to.
But these days
there’s no money
for that. And people keep
leaving out old bread,
rice, stale cookies, or else
plant more delicious flowers.
“Mei banfa,”
my mother-in-law says:
Nothing can be done.
Seeing them in
the distance—that distance
we can’t close
without them shying
and turning and skittering
down Dickinson Lane
or bounding
over a backyard fence—
I try to imagine
they’re messengers
come back to tell us
their stories, any news
of the lost or what
comes next, though
if they could say
anything, they would
probably say, Go away.

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