The Meadow April 19,2019

As soon as I arrived (Good Friday morning) I walked the Meadow.  It is at its spring peak right now.  The top part of the Meadow is liberally dotted with colorful wildflowers - yellow, red, hot pink, purple, and white.  The Silver Bluestem seed heads wave in the breeze.  The Brown Eyed Susans are all in bud, but it is not their time yet.  The Horsemint is about a foot tall now, but a month or so away from flowering.

The middle section of the Meadow is populated with mostly late spring flowers like yellow primrose (I make these names up as I go along), but so many countless more that will bloom later.  Standing Cypress, a favorite of mine, with its bright orange flowers will come and go throughout the summer and fall.  And my bluestem transplants that I labored on last spring are all greening up.

The lower section of the Meadow has some shining examples of grasses that are beautiful, but it requires some work.  The Beautyberry us springing up everywhere - pretty, but I don't want shrubs in my meadow, only grasses and flowers.  It will take some work to eradicate the Beautyberry as well as the Poke Salad, the Boneset, and the yaupon.  It is a decades-long commitment to encourage the good plants and get rid of the bad ones.  I don't think I fully comprehended the commitment when I took on this project.  For instance, there is a plant that is everywhere that can get really weedy (I think it has the word "bear" in the name.  It grows tall and throws off a weedy white flower that throws seed everywhere.  As I walk through the Meadow, I am always steady-pulling it up.  It's a lot easier when it is young - first of all because the roots aren't too deep yet, but also because the earth is soft from all the winter and spring rains.  They are a booger to pull up in the summer.  I am not a fan of the tall plants dotting the landscape.  I am discouraging those.  And to do so requires manpower.  So, even a carefree wildflower meadow is deceptive regarding the effort it requires to become a show-stopper of nature. At any rate, Friday noon, I carried an oil can with a mixture of Remedy and diesel oil and my clippers, and I spent about an hour clipping beautyberry and dripping a tiny bit of the noxious mixture on the raw cut.  I could definitely tell the difference, but I doubt a newcomer to the scene could tell the difference.

But the plant diversity in the Meadow is incredible and, for me, a wonderfully creative outlet as I observe and wonder at the insects and plants.  Below is some sort of thistle.  I've never seen insects so intensely enamored of any plant.  They are burrowing in the thistles with the greatest of energy (mostly they are Japanese beetles, unfortunately).