Reinventing myself: again. And doing it solo. I hardly know where to start.
So I won’t. Not yet. Maybe soon. Until then, a few observations and images from my late spring peregrinations of body and spirit. There is plenty to do and see here. But not from the LazyBoy. I need to get out. I really need to get out.
And I did, Saturday, to attend the Columbia Farmer’s Market for the first time, where I met some new and some familiar native plants along the margins. (Do check out the market page, Floyd Folk, it is really quite impressive. And like Floyd’s market, it is a community gathering place on Saturdays. I will go back often.)
The most interesting shrub at a distance I first thought was a milkweed. The distinctive UMBEL “ball of flowers” fooled me. This plant is in the rose family, which I could tell on closer examination by the few clusters in flower.
It grows in every state I have lived in but I never made note of it. (Range maps have it as NOT native to Missouri.)
This beautiful native shrub is NINEBARK. If I had a yard that needed foundation plantings, I’d consider this one. It should attract a lot of interest for its flower and later, a huge number of seeds.
Growing and Caring for Ninebark
One plant I knew but had not seen in a long while was Cup Plant—so called because it has clasping leaf bases around a square stem that will hold water.
I have a shot of those leaf “ponds” but the aphids grazing like tiny cows on the underside of a cup plant leaf is more interesting.
Spiderwort is a common wildflower, but even so, I was delighted to find it in abundance along wet margins of the market. I recalled that is has been used as a biosensor to detect radiation. And it has a Pocohantas connection.
See It with Flowers: A BioSensor for Radiation
And lastly, unless I already lost you, I was delighted for the first time to see a tree in flower that I usually only notice when the smallish tree is in fruit in the fall. I would be interested to know if anyone recognizes it. I sure did not at first. See the caption for the ID.
I am sure I’ve said this before (heck I’ve said everything before by now) but looking for and finding old friends in the Green World is very like chancing upon a fond acquaintance again after seasons apart.
In the absence of bipedal friends, I am thankful for my botanical buddies and for adding new contacts to my list of known and named beings in the plant world.
Now: I am eager to find those bipedals, feeling more than a little disconnected just now, and immersed in exploring the both-and of loneliness and solitude. I am in the market for a new way of life. More, anon.
– Fred First is an author, naturalist, photographer watching Nature under siege since the first Earth Day. Cautiously hopeful. Writing to think it through. Thanks for joining me. Subscribe to My Substack HERE.