Milkweed: Tough Native
Usually when I spy a plant bursting forth from a crack in the cement like this, it’s a non-native plant, an invasive “weed” of some sort. I tend to think of native plants as timid souls, needing shade and rich forest loam–dainty wildflowers, fragile ferns, like that. But milkweed, a native American plant, packs a bit of muscle, it seems. It pokes up in all sorts of unexpected places. Milkweed is the plant where Monarch butterflies are concerned–common milkweed and a few other closely related plants in the Asclepias genus are the only plants Monarchs will lay...
Read MoreFirst Day of School
A beautiful day–not a cloud in the sky, sun pouring down. Seems like the universe is needlessly rubbing it in, as kids line up for the bus and head off to school. When I was in high school, I remember reading the ending lines of Romeo and Juliet and thinking that they applied perfectly to the first day of school. A glooming peace this morning with it brings, the sun for sorrow will not show his head… A rainy first day of school made the return to penal servitude easier somehow. What do we tell the reluctant scholars clambering onto the bus, depressed at the end of summer freedom?...
Read MoreLily Pad Lifestyle
Floating along without a care in the world. Such effortless beauty. No wonder Monet couldn’t stop painting them. At the New York Botanical Garden, my favorite place is the the water lily pool. Its giant surface is covered with lily pads and fringed by tall lotus blossoms with leaves the size of bicycle tires. Reflections of the sky and the white conservatory buildings mingle with the lilies and the lotuses–it’s sort of a cross between between Paris and the Nile. The thing about a shallow, still pool like this is that you can’t see all the way to the bottom. Water lilies,...
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