Mourning the McCollister Mowing

The past several days as I've driven along McCollister Boulevard between Sycamore and  South Gilbert, I've marveled at the diverse and scenic display of "weeds" adorning the median. So many textures and heights! Several types of clovers, docks, pennycress, grasses, alfalfa, and so many others that I'm not familiar with, filling in the patchy earth with lush life, the taller specimens swaying in the wind while their creeping companions hunkered in low clumps.

I decided to hop on my bicycle to take some pictures of the scrappy survivors on this beautiful blue-sky day...but as I turn on to McCollister I see only stubble. In a few short hours the city has mowed my beautiful median! 

Yes, they are largely (perhaps exclusively) nonnatives, destined to be landscaped away with hardy natives or replaced with turfgrass. Certainly some of my fellow citizens may have thought it unsightly. But even as I mourned the loss of my photo op, I could see that the roadsides were still unmowed, and nearer to the Sycamore roundabout the more narrow median also sported its weedy decor. All was not lost. 

A few specimens stood out: a single magnificent Musk Thistle plant next to the sidewalk. The pale purple Alfalfa flowers. The slope covered in sunshiny Birdsfoot Trefoil. The...Casey's pizza box nestled below. For this stretch of road is also a litterbug's haven: any given day you can find a few dented cans of the ubiquitous Busch Light, sometimes near a half-dozen glass beer bottles and assorted other single-use beverage containers. The plants don't seem to mind.

When you look at the scene as a whole, it can definitely look messy. But if you look more closely and recognize some of the individual plants, you begin to see how they fit together in a spontaneous community left largely to its own devices. You see the bees and butterflies, the blackbirds and sparrows. 

I know many will rightly lament the proliferation of these botanical invaders...but they saw an opening, seized it, and made themselves a home together.  

Who Said Docks Are Boring?

 It seems like each summer I find a new "thing" along the Greenway. One year it is Eurasian Tree Sparrows, another year it might be Leafcutter Bees, the Camouflaged Looper, or extrafloral nectaries. Sometimes I stumble upon my "thing" for the year, and sometimes I seek it out.

This summer I have declared "summer of smartweeds." Unfortunately, smartweeds don't really get up and running until later in the season, so I'm biding my time checking out their close relatives, the docks (Rumex spp.). Of course, I don't know much about them (yet) but I've been looking for their weedy shapes along the sidewalks, checking their stems for distinguishing ochreae, and generally noticing them in a way I didn't before. 

Which brings me to the black schmutz spotted coating the stem and leaves of a dock plant I would otherwise have passed by as (forgive me) boring. What is that, some kind of fungus? I catch a stem blowing in the heavy wind and hunker down for a closer look.

Aphids! 

Tiny black aphids, clustered together on the stem. Larger ants attend them, with a beetle and a spider also hanging around suspiciously. I took what photos I could with the swaying stem and went home to research.

Conveniently, there is a black Dock Aphid (Aphis rumicis) that uses docks and smartweeds as a host. I can't say with certainty this is my aphid, but it is strikingly apt. One resource even describes "rolled and crumpled leaves" caused by colonies of this aphid, which matched the leaves I saw on the host plant. 

Though aphids are unsightly pests for many gardeners, they have an interesting lifecycle, and their curious chunky little bodies with cornicles (often charmingly described as "tailpipes" or "exhaust pipes") sticking out, some winged and some wingless, are rather cute when you look at them as individuals instead of a nearly-solid mass on a stem.

So while out looking for one new friend, I encountered another. What else will I find in the summer of smartweeds?

The Photographer's Lament

 I often lament that I have become one of those social media-obsessed folks who lives through the lens of a camera, always on the lookout for the next picture to share with the world. What good is seeing something if you can't share it?

"If you could just turn
your head a bit...."

Going for an early morning run sans camera, every mile punctuated with a mournful "oh wow, look at that! I wish I had my camera." The sun a blazing orange disc, swaddled in pink clouds and all overlaid with a soft gray mist. The bird darting swiftly just ahead of me on the trail, two white rectangles on its tail. A curious-looking weed I'd like to identify.

Or this morning's parkrun at City Park: faint sun dogs overhead, a pair of Eastern Kingbirds foraging near the banks of the river. The groundhog I surprised next to the trail on the way home. All of them momentary glimpses of the world that come and go, leaving no evidence beyond the faint image in my memory.

Beautiful, thank you.

I tell myself the moments are all the more dear because they are ephemeral, and my own. The puppy tries to teach me his ways: eagerly watch for and investigate every novelty you come across, and then move on with no regrets. Check out the crayon a child left on the sidewalk; swivel your ears to locate the bird singing in the brush nearby, bite at the puffy head of dandelion seeds. And then move on.

There need be no permanence on a walk; it's the experience of the walk itself that is important. Those happenstance moments of beauty or novelty are just the sprinkles on the happy donut of life's meandering journey.

But then I go out with the camera again and see the odd shape in the shadows near the creek. Click! Well hello Cooper's Hawk! That's a curious place for you...hold still a moment, and maybe turn your head a bit so I can get your fierce eye in focus. Wow, this'll be great for the blog! Click-click-click.