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 MoreLast Day of Summer
A beautiful sunset for the last day of summer. Yes, I know, technically the equinox isn’t for weeks yet, but August is summer. On September 1, the year turns to autumn. No doubt about it, on my calendar. September is cool breezes, a little too cool to go swimming. September is apples. September is asters, and the first chance of frost. September is school. So say goodbye to summer, this long weird summer of rain, heat, and cold. Welcome fall. Thanks to Diane Hale Smith for the photo!
Read MoreGoldenrod: Does Not Cause Hay Fever
GOLDENROD DOES NOT CAUSE HAY FEVER. The first sight of goldenrod’s yellow blossoms means summer has reached its high tide. Now we’re on the downhill slope to fall. Fall, the time of gorgeous color, and goldenrod is the first bright splash of paint on autumn’s palette. And there’s some mixed metaphors for you. Goldenrod is a native American plant, great for wildlife, beautiful to look at. And yet it’s wildly unpopular. The poor innocent plant has been wrongfully implicated in a crime it did not, and never will, commit. GOLDENROD DOES NOT CAUSE HAY FEVER. This fact cannot be repeated often...
Read MoreGuest Photographer Wells Horton
“These dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be. I love the bare, the withered tree, I walk the sodden pasture lane.” –Robert Frost Thanks to Well Horton for another amazing photograph. http://wells-horton.smugmug.com/
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