Summer's Bounty

I have started to be overwhelmed by summer's bounty. I mean, how will I eat 6 cucumbers before the next 6 are ready to be harvested... especially wiat with all the broccoli, zucchini, etc... SOme things are wonderful to be able to complain about.

Ode to a Phenology Master

It's hard, of course, for a plant person to choose a favorite plant. I surely couldn't, but if pressed... I might well choose the compassplant. Some have started blooming, but those in my garden are slow this year. (I hope they're OK.)

In his A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes about silphium in July.

Prairie Birthday

During every week from April to September there are, on

the average, ten wild plants coming into first bloom. In
June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a
single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no
man can ignore all of them. He who steps unseeing on May
dandelions may be hauled up short by August ragweed
pollen; he who ignores the ruddy haze of April elms may
skid his car on the fallen corollas of June catalpas. Tell me
of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell
you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay
fever, and the general level of his ecological education.

Every July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840's. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sale remnant of this plant along this highway,· and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July. When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have 'taken' what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have 'taken' what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncom- prehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy- nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life. ..... Silphium first became a personality to me when I tried to dig one up to move to my farm. It was like digging an oak sapling. After half an hour of hot grimy labor the root was still enlarging, like a great vertical sweet-potato. As far as I know, that Silphium root went clear through to bedrock. I got no Silphium, but I learned by what elaborate underground strategems in contrives to weather the prairie drouths. I next planted Silphium seeds, which are large, meaty, and taste like sunflower seeds. They came up promptly, but after five years of waiting the seedlings are still juvenile, and have not yet borne a flower-stalk. Perhaps it takes a decade for Silphium to reach flowering age; how old, then, was my pet plant in the cemetery? It may have been older than the oldest tombstonem which is dated 1850. Perhaps it watched the fugitive Black Hawk retreat from the Madison lakes to the Wisconsin River; it stood on the route of that famous march. Certainly it saw the successive funerals of the local pioneers as they retire, one by one, to their repose beneath the bluestem. And on it goes, describing how the silphium comes back when destroyed, for a while, anyhow, until it doesn't. But I feel like that's an awful lot of copying someone else's writing, (an awful lot of words in general, actually). It's good, though. Makes me wonder what's the point? I mean, of me writing anything, ever, when he has done it so masterfully already. Oh, well.

Another Garden Visit

Here is the new damselfly for the day... but I can't positively identify her. (The bluets are hard -- there's a ton and they all look similar. But the female bluets are even harder!) I think this one might be a female blue-fronted dancer.
I know this is bad photo (of orange bluets mating) but the point I wanted to make is... damselflies were mating today, like, a lot. At one point, I saw three couples at one time.
Sunflower ready to open up! I love the brown sunflowers, because their brown color is on top of the typical sunflower yellow. You can see the yellow through the brown costume, and if you pick a petal and break it, it's yellow inside.
Virgin's bower, the native clematis, in bloom.
Boneset.
Hophornbeam seeds.
Hazel nuts.

Now for the waterfowl update...
Baby swans.
This juvenile duck, probably one of the first born this year, is the size of an adult, but his coloring hasn't fully come in yet (his head doesn't have the pretty green), whereas...
These baby mallards are much littler and so so cute.

Plants turning color already (and, besides this fern and anenome, there are more, like some serviceberry leaves and Solomon's seal).

(Yeah, I know this is sideways. I don't care.)

Mystery revisited

This is the mystery shrub, from whence came last week's photo (below, to refresh), which sparked a small discussion about where it came from.

Turns out its a:

So, there you have it!

Almost Sunflowers

Brown-eyed Susan,

filling in the void before sunflowers bloom. They are well-adapted to survive long periods without rain, for their hairy stems keep water from evapo-transpirating very quickly and their roots are wide-spreading and fibrous.

Culver's root begins to bloom. These tiny white flowers are actually in the snapdragon family, like beardtongues or the foxgloves that my dad so admires in England. They bloom from bottom to top, with the bottom ones forming seeds while the top ones are blooming -- so these are just starting, with the top ones still buds and only the bottom few in bloom.

Below, the first large-leaf aster (or big-leaf, some people call them, but that doesn't sound as good to me). These woodland asters are supposed to be some of the latest blooming flowers in the fall, and yet, mysteriously, a few are starting to open up in my yard. No idea why. My yard is apparently a mysterious place.

It is sprinkling outside, almost raining. Could we please, please, please get some measurable precipitation around here?

Prairie Royalty

The queen begins her reign today. Queen of the Prairie has clouds of tiny pink flowers that look fluffy, like cotton candy flowers. Mine have started to open their blossoms, and will continue to put on these royal crowns over the next week or so, I imagine. This native plant generally makes its home in wet prairies, which is not a match for the conditions in my yard. However, I planted it near the exit of my drain spout, and it has done quite well in these feast or famine conditions, taking over a nice large area in the past few years. It's a fun addition to the landscape, pale pink being a relatively rare color in prairie plants... in fact, with its largish leaves and flowers, many people don't believe it's a native at all!

In the garden, sugar snap peas are, sadly, tapering off. We're still getting some, but not like last week when we had handfuls a day, which I loved. Broccoli is coming in fast and furious (although I am disappointed in the small size of the flower heads in my garden, but... oh, well) and corn is flowering. It should be noted, of course, that ours was started from seed indoors and transplanted; that's why it is so far ahead of where farmers' corn is right now... knee high by the fourth of July (one of those phenology sayings everyone knows) -- and I'm not sure they all made that benchmark this year, what with rain delaying planting.

Lighting up the Night

The past is beautiful

Like the darkness between the fireflies --Mason Jennings

Fireflies are out in the evenings as darkness sets in, blinking their famous mating displays.

I'm not going to pretend I have tons of happy kid memories of putting fireflies in jars and making lanterns to keep all night, or anything like that. I remember watching them as a kid, sometimes catching one in my hand. But my best memory of fireflies came when I was in college. I remember sitting one warm June Minnesota evening during finals -- because of this, I always think of fireflies as a June occurrence, although I didn't see many of them this year until July.

But anyhow, we were sitting atop the hill by Evans, overlooking the athletic fields, and across in the arb a million fireflies began blinking. So many it was like slow motion, peaceful fireworks. And the friend I was with, he was just amazed. "What is that?" he asked, truly in awe.

Me, dismissively: "Fireflies," with an implied, "duh."

But he had never seen them, he insisted. He had grown up in Arizona. I guess they don't have fireflies there. And so, as an almost adult, this kid-magic was new to him. I have never seen anyone, at any age, as excited or reverential about anything in nature. And we watched them, and I remembered... that it's important not to take things for granted. That it doesn't take a child, as some cliches may tell you, to remind you to see things anew. That we can see things anew, that every time I see something it is new. It is in a new place, a new circumstance. It has something new to teach me.

I am amazed by little things. When plants grow. When buds explode into flowers and flowers to seeds. I touch the same silphium leaf every day and I love its cool roughness every time. New, different, miraculous every time.

There aren't as many fireflies here as at Carleton that night (I wonder if there are as many there?) but they still make me stop and watch, and remind me of this lesson. Thanks, fireflies! (And thanks, A.)