This expression is attributed to Aristotle, so we know how long people have been observing zealous plant growth.
I experienced it intensely the other day, while clearing out scrub around fresh pine stumps. Back in April we had four 100-foot giants removed so they wouldn't guillotine the house when they came down in a high wind. Two of them were splitting, all were intertwined, and they stood about 15 feet from the house and were leaning in that direction.
The stumps remain in an area approx. 15x15 square composed of gritty sand that's been saturated with pine needles and fully shadowed for five decades. Scarcely anything ever grew below them -- until the ground was suddenly naked and in full sun.
Then, in four months, the most concentrated, diverse patch of wildflowers, vines, trees, and shrubs I've ever seen erupted. They occupied every square inch of the exposed wasteland, including dirt pockets collected in the stumps' bark. I recognized about two dozen by name and another dozen or two by sight; yet another dozen or more I'd never seen before, which is interesting because I study wildflowers and have laid eyes on most of what grows in the area.
Even more interesting, there were no baby pines. But there were baby ash and maple, sumac and poplar, even something that looked like apple; goldenrod and pigweed, johnny-jump-ups and Virginia creeper, wood aster, hawkweed, a metastasizing mint, a tangled mat of bedstraw, two particularly evil grasses as well as generic lawn grass, brambles, mullein, wild morning glories, assorted clovers and sorrels, violets, burdock, a clump of Siberian iris left over from a previous owner's garden, plus two sunflowers -- presumably contributed by birds.
I should have taken the time to look up each species in my field guide, but I became obsessed with finishing the clear-out by sundown. The resulting pile is so big I need the tractor bucket to remove it from the yard. I'm impressed equally by the volume and the diversity of this growth, as well as how fast and thoroughly it came. Makes garden weeds look wimpy!
We won't be getting the stumps dug out before winter, so I can count on having to repeat the exercise next year. After all, I just re-created the vacuum that Nature can't help herself from filling!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Showing posts with label wildflowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wildflowers. Show all posts
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Perfection
Yeah, we all know . . . nothing in life is perfect.
Well, I beg to differ. Late last week we had an Absolutely Perfect Day.
The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The air was ideally comfortable for bare arms and legs and feet, with a light breeze air-conditioning your skin in the event you moved around enough to perspire. No matter what you did, you were comfortable.
And everywhere you looked, the scenery was beautiful. Lawns and trees still vivid summertime green, with color tinges creeping in to signal the pending change of season. But it's not here yet -- wildflowers and garden beds were still in full bloom, with vegetables and fruits adding bright dots of color between the foliage.
Birds and butterflies still darted about in their own color show before packing up for migration. Crickets and cicadas added music to the air.
It was a perfect day for doing anything outdoors, from hiking and boating to sitting on the porch with a book. If you couldn't get outside, it was a perfect day to look out the window, and open all the windows wide, and curtains, too, to let all the air and color and light flow through.
In our complicated and inconsistent world, it's good to know that Mother Nature can proffer up a perfect day now and then. And a joy to be alive when it happens.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Well, I beg to differ. Late last week we had an Absolutely Perfect Day.
The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The air was ideally comfortable for bare arms and legs and feet, with a light breeze air-conditioning your skin in the event you moved around enough to perspire. No matter what you did, you were comfortable.
And everywhere you looked, the scenery was beautiful. Lawns and trees still vivid summertime green, with color tinges creeping in to signal the pending change of season. But it's not here yet -- wildflowers and garden beds were still in full bloom, with vegetables and fruits adding bright dots of color between the foliage.
Birds and butterflies still darted about in their own color show before packing up for migration. Crickets and cicadas added music to the air.
It was a perfect day for doing anything outdoors, from hiking and boating to sitting on the porch with a book. If you couldn't get outside, it was a perfect day to look out the window, and open all the windows wide, and curtains, too, to let all the air and color and light flow through.
In our complicated and inconsistent world, it's good to know that Mother Nature can proffer up a perfect day now and then. And a joy to be alive when it happens.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The grass is always greener...
"I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn."
--William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)
I agree!
It's lawn-mowing season again, and this time every year I rue the fact we have 2+ acres of lawn to manage. All we have to do is mow; not for us the fertilizing and feeding and obsessive grooming that many homeowners undertake in order to achieve perfect greenswards. We think grass grows just fine by itself (especially where you don't want it!).
Simply mowing it is work and expense aplenty. It's also very un-"green" because we have to use oil and gasoline to beat back field and forest. I've considered letting parts of the yard go wild, but that invites biting creatures closer to the house. By keeping a moat of trimmed grass around us, we limit the mosquitoes, ticks, and blackflies in our main activity area, and remove hiding places for bird and pet predators. Plenty of wilderness remains for them to prowl in.
In May, grass grows so fast and lush that we need to mow twice weekly. Can't be done, though, owing to twice- or thrice-a-week rain. By the time things have dried out enough to rev up the tractor, we need machetes just to find it!
As the season advances, we end up with half a wildflower yard anyway. Islands of clover emerge; we mow around them to leave a banquet for the bees. Volunteer black-eyed Susans pop up; we mow around them because it's too callous to destroy their cheer. And so forth. Ultimately lawnmowing becomes a gymkhana, zooming and dodging around obstacles in summer sport.
Then, before you know it, the season has flashed by and it's time to stow the mower again for seven long months.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
--William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)
I agree!
It's lawn-mowing season again, and this time every year I rue the fact we have 2+ acres of lawn to manage. All we have to do is mow; not for us the fertilizing and feeding and obsessive grooming that many homeowners undertake in order to achieve perfect greenswards. We think grass grows just fine by itself (especially where you don't want it!).
Simply mowing it is work and expense aplenty. It's also very un-"green" because we have to use oil and gasoline to beat back field and forest. I've considered letting parts of the yard go wild, but that invites biting creatures closer to the house. By keeping a moat of trimmed grass around us, we limit the mosquitoes, ticks, and blackflies in our main activity area, and remove hiding places for bird and pet predators. Plenty of wilderness remains for them to prowl in.
In May, grass grows so fast and lush that we need to mow twice weekly. Can't be done, though, owing to twice- or thrice-a-week rain. By the time things have dried out enough to rev up the tractor, we need machetes just to find it!
As the season advances, we end up with half a wildflower yard anyway. Islands of clover emerge; we mow around them to leave a banquet for the bees. Volunteer black-eyed Susans pop up; we mow around them because it's too callous to destroy their cheer. And so forth. Ultimately lawnmowing becomes a gymkhana, zooming and dodging around obstacles in summer sport.
Then, before you know it, the season has flashed by and it's time to stow the mower again for seven long months.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Plantly neighbors
What with a crazy schedule and the crazy weather this season, I've lost the habit of my daily walk.
Finally a break came and I had opportunity to stroll the mile out our country road and back on a beautiful day. It surprised me, though it shouldn't have, to find the same plants in the same places that I've noted on previous walks over ten years.
For some reason -- perhaps the volatility of yard and garden each year -- I expect the wild woods and edges to change dramatically in a short time. They do, superficially, and most evident in the cycles of foliage. Also in what flourishes or languishes in a given year as a result of weather.
But the established trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and escaped perennials hold fast to their positions, to the point where they form signposts along the road. I almost feel like waving as I pass, as if to neighbors sunning on the porch or working in their yards. Hello, myrtle-bed in the silo ruin, and pearly-everlasting community in the clearing. How ya doin', trilliums in the shady glen, now sporting bright red berries I've not seen before, like their brethren, the jack-in-the-pulpits popping up along the way.
There's the tree stump with the very low, very large hole drilled by the local pileated woodpecker (which hole a human neighbor -- a second-homer from the city -- thought was made by a bear!). And over here in the swamp is the blanket of forget-me-nots that surprises me each summer when I think it's too late for their bloom; while over there, in the heap of road scrum alongside an open field, is the strange-looking, strangely named viper's bugloss. And under there, lurking beneath one clump of foliage, is the only wild ginger in the area.
Other plants migrate but are always present during their season: various asters, black-eyed Susans, daisy fleabane -- and myriad daisies; Queen Anne's lace, milkweed galore, Joe-pye weed, goldenrod galore, and the tall spires of mullein. It's fun each year to see where these populations will spring up next.
On it goes, becoming more interesting and familiar as I learn the names of things, and their habitats. A mere mile along a country lane contains dozens of microclimates, so that many of my plantly neighbors can grow only in the pockets where I find them. Their permanence comforts me, and makes me feel plantlike in response; i.e., more rooted in my community. Simultaneously, they make me feel lonely, for I'm the only one of my species anywhere in the area who knows these plantly neighbors and where they live.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Finally a break came and I had opportunity to stroll the mile out our country road and back on a beautiful day. It surprised me, though it shouldn't have, to find the same plants in the same places that I've noted on previous walks over ten years.
For some reason -- perhaps the volatility of yard and garden each year -- I expect the wild woods and edges to change dramatically in a short time. They do, superficially, and most evident in the cycles of foliage. Also in what flourishes or languishes in a given year as a result of weather.
But the established trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and escaped perennials hold fast to their positions, to the point where they form signposts along the road. I almost feel like waving as I pass, as if to neighbors sunning on the porch or working in their yards. Hello, myrtle-bed in the silo ruin, and pearly-everlasting community in the clearing. How ya doin', trilliums in the shady glen, now sporting bright red berries I've not seen before, like their brethren, the jack-in-the-pulpits popping up along the way.
There's the tree stump with the very low, very large hole drilled by the local pileated woodpecker (which hole a human neighbor -- a second-homer from the city -- thought was made by a bear!). And over here in the swamp is the blanket of forget-me-nots that surprises me each summer when I think it's too late for their bloom; while over there, in the heap of road scrum alongside an open field, is the strange-looking, strangely named viper's bugloss. And under there, lurking beneath one clump of foliage, is the only wild ginger in the area.
Other plants migrate but are always present during their season: various asters, black-eyed Susans, daisy fleabane -- and myriad daisies; Queen Anne's lace, milkweed galore, Joe-pye weed, goldenrod galore, and the tall spires of mullein. It's fun each year to see where these populations will spring up next.
On it goes, becoming more interesting and familiar as I learn the names of things, and their habitats. A mere mile along a country lane contains dozens of microclimates, so that many of my plantly neighbors can grow only in the pockets where I find them. Their permanence comforts me, and makes me feel plantlike in response; i.e., more rooted in my community. Simultaneously, they make me feel lonely, for I'm the only one of my species anywhere in the area who knows these plantly neighbors and where they live.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
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