How To Rescue a Raingarden

It's doing better now. The blue vervain has rebounded impressively. After being mowed down for most of a year, the native grasses--big bluestem, wild rye, and switchgrass--had looked like gonners, but they too have reappeared in numbers and are reaching for the sky.

Most raingardens, like many Americans, lack medical insurance. There's no money to restore their health when the weeds take over. There's money to design them, and install them, and sometimes even regulations that require they be planted. But to keep them thriving and looking good? Well, they're pretty much on their own.

If you think about it, most urban landscapes are cared for by people who know next to nothing about plants. If the medical profession were run like the landscaping business, hospitals would be manned by custodians equipped with leaf blowers and weed whippers, and anyone who came in with a medical issue would be left to fester, then eventually mowed down when they became unsightly. Under such conditions, trees can survive, and some foundation shrubs, but if you're a plant that's neither tree nor shrub nor turfgrass, life could be short.

The landscape architect who designed this raingarden, in a parking lot a few blocks from my house, likely had considerable training, and hopefully makes a decent living, but the designer is long gone and the garden will only survive if it is maintained. Whoever maintains it must know and be able to recognize, at every stage of their growth, not only the intended plants the designer was familiar with, but also the many kinds of weeds that threaten to overwhelm the intended plants. There's no time to pull every last weed, so efficient maintenance requires knowing which weeds pose a serious threat to a balanced planting, and which are benign. And by the way, all the money was spent on design and installation. Nothing's left to pay the people who determine the plantings fate and need the greatest knowledge.

I should have intervened sooner. Instead, a few years ago, having urged those responsible, to no avail, to hire either me or someone else who could give the raingarden the skilled care it needed, I watched as the intended plants got overwhelmed by a bumper crop of 7 foot high pigweed and lambsquarters. The next year, the landscape crew noticed how weedy the raingarden had become, so they mowed it all down and started treating it like a lawn. That's the classic progression: garden to weeds to lawn. The lack of plant knowledge makes most landscape care like a light switch. There are two positions: on and off. You either let it grow "natural" or mow it down. No selective intervention. Our inner gardens, which is to say our bodies, are cared for by knowledgeable people, who provide skilled medical intervention if need be. Why not a raingarden? The answer is that people matter, while saving a raingarden, like saving a livable planet, is considered optional.

Strangely, I feel lucky. Yes, I'm putting in a half hour here and there of volunteer work because of a culture's disconnect with plants, but one thing I learned from my astronomer father was to make a project more interesting by thinking of it as an experiment. How dramatically will a neglected raingarden respond to a little TLC? How little time can be invested and still get a good result?

There's such pleasure--why don't others feel this?--in rescuing a garden like this. Multiple levels of restoration happen at the same time: beauty, diversity, ecological function. And then there's the strategy, like playing bridge--using finesse to gain the best results with the cards you're dealt, dealing with multiple variables as the drama plays out. A different strategy is applied to each kind of weed. This is wild gardening, not total control. Leave the daisy fleabane with its weedy form but attractive flower. It's not doing any harm and won't take over. Take advantage of last night's rain to pull otherwise stubborn weeds out of the softened earth. Find satisfaction in the ease of undercutting a dandelion with a shovel blade. Catch mugwort or Canada thistle early, before they have a chance to spread. Feel the deeply American frontier mix of wit and muscle, mind and body. Live the wisdom of a hand-me-down phrase like "a stitch in time saves nine."

Otherwise, you end up with large swaths smothered with bindweed,

or carpeted with crown vetch. These will take something more than a clean undercutting with a shovel.

The solitary lambsquarter poses no threat at this point, and could end up in a salad.

The amaranth is already some insect's salad.

The smartweed (Polygonum) could prove aggressive, but the Japanese beetles are doing a good job of weakening its spreading tendencies. May as well leave it for now.

Velvet leaf isn't doing any harm, and will likely be eclipsed as the intended plants gain dominance.

Pilewort and

horseweeds are native weeds that grow tall and gangly, contributing to a weedy look if left in.

The catnip is staying for the meantime, though as a mint it could prove aggressive.

The Queen Anne's Lace (the same species that makes the carrots we eat) is pretty, but I've seen it take over fields in the midwest. Maybe remove it after the flowers fade.

There's no perfection here, and no certainty that each decision is the right one, but the results have been heartening, with the original plantings showing more resiliency than expected.

Next time I'm walking the dog over that way, maybe I'll remember to take pruners to trim back the redbud. Perhaps it should be called "casual insistence", this integration of garden rescue into the fabric of one's life, pulling weeds every week or two while the dog waits patiently. There are a few of us in town hard-wired to care in this way, with inner clocks that say "time to go take a look", who find this sort of casually serious and seriously casual persistence with a garden to be satisfying. Perhaps someday more people, maybe even some professional landscape crews, will discover the pleasure, and fewer raingardens will be lost to the weeds.

In the meantime, breathe in the cool air of an early summer evening, and feel like a conductor molding nature's growth force into a symphony, orchestrating the comeback of a raingarden nearly lost to the world.

Mile a Minute--A Wave Growing Across NJ's Countryside

You can spot it a mile away. Early summer, and already this annual, thorn-covered vine called Mile-a-Minute is rising like a wave along fencelines in New Jersey's countryside. Thus far, in my ramblings around Princeton, I have found only two tiny patches--at the Battlefield and along the driveway into Rogers Refuge--both of which have been knocked out the past two years. Is this sort of early intervention and annual followup worth it? The answer becomes abundantly clear just outside of town, halfway to Hopewell, where Mile-a-Minute vine is demonstrating just how much of a prickly menace it can be if not caught early.

It's a plant that seeks to be seen everywhere, and with all the other players on the plant scene. Here it is growing up a tree,

and sprawling over another invasive, garlic mustard.

Even those thistles with their prickly personalities aren't off-putting for a Mile-a-Minute vine.

It's said to have been an accidental introduction from eastern Asia via the nursery trade, originally gaining a foothold in York County, PA, in the 1930s and spreading from there.

Rampancy rules in this photo, as mile-a-minute swarms an autumn olive--a highly invasive shrub. When mile-a-minute's around, the curtain doesn't fall on other plants, but rises, in a wave of triangular leaves.

Here's Mile-a-Minute chasing the growth tip of a blackberry. Check back in a month to see who won the race.

Here, a privet's growing a prickly skirt.

Those pink flowers are Canada thistle, invader of many a garden bed, which is about to meet its match.

Long-time ubiquitous invasives, multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle, are joined by Mile-a-Minute.

You'd think perennial vines like wild grape would have a big advantage over an annual vine that has to spring anew from the soil every year, but Mile-a-Minute is looking up to the challenge.

Note the holes in the Mile-a-Minute leaves. Those are most likely from a weevil that was introduced as a biological control. The hope is that the weevil will become numerous enough, and consume enough triangular leaves to slow the wave of Mile-a-Minute engulfing the countryside.

Thus far, the Mile-a-Minute looks undeterred, growing over the slowly maturing fruits of wineberry,

and the pale stems of native black raspberry.

Beyond any ecological impact of such rampancy, it's interesting to reflect on the aesthetic and emotional impact of seeing a landscape being overrun by Mile-a-Minute. A healthy native prairie, for example, teaming with many species of grasses and wildflowers, all reaching for the sun with no inclination to crawl over one another, gives a feeling of striving, freedom, diversity, peaceful cohabitation, tolerance of one species for another. In contrast, a vine like Mile-a-Minute creates a smothering effect, a sense of clutter and thorny entanglement, a suppression of difference, an oppressive dependency that plays out as a punishment for any plant that dare reach a sturdy stem for the sky.

Creating Charging Stations for Pollinators

Gratifying to see the Smoyer Park detention basin growing into its new persona as a native meadow.

Last year's conversion from turf to native grasses and wildflowers came in pretty sparse after the initial seeding in May,

and deer munched on the few flowers that grew to maturity.

This year, the deer's appetite was overwhelmed by black-eyed susans and daisies.

The gaps in the original seeding left room for some of us local wild gardeners to add additional species. Some volunteers with Friends of Herrontown Woods, which has offered to give this wet meadow the tlc it needs to prosper, scattered and raked in wildflower seed from local populations, and planted some live stakes of buttonbush, bareroot transplants of Hibiscus, cutleaf coneflower, and others. Much of it seems to get pulled up, most likely by deer, but even if only a few specimens of these additional species survive, they'll produce their own seed and form viable populations. So many local wildflower species are barely hanging on, essentially isolated genetically. Establishing new populations will make these species more secure and functional--genetically and ecologically. One project underway since about 2006 has been to spread the floodplain species found along the canal into other wet areas of Princeton, be they detention basins, backyards,

or the little raingarden in front of the Whole Earth Center on Nassau Street, which is fed by water from the roof and sidewalk. Think of these wet, sunny spots as charging stations for pollinators during summer months when the local woodlands offer little in the form of pollen.

In the photo is a nursery-grown oak-leafed hydrangia on the right, but the cutleaf coneflowers rising towards bloom on the left are from seeds harvested originally along the towpath.

These elderberries blooming at the Princeton High School wetland, tucked away on the Walnut Street side of the school, began as 2' stem cuttings from along the canal, then pushed into the basin's mud years ago to sprout leaves and roots.

Here's a photo only a botanist could love, of an area of the high school wetland cleared by environmental science students of too-aggressive cattails so the fringed sedges and Hibiscus could thrive. In July and August, this same spot will be in full flower.

The Smoyer Park and Princeton High School detention basins, along with another at Farmview Fields were converted to natives with the help of the Partners for Fish and Wildlife--part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a good example of how a little input from "big government" can kickstart local initiatives that then can thrive with a few strategic workdays a year.

Common milkweed blew in on its own, a bit of serendipity to augment human intention. We'll see if the monarchs show up.

It can't be emphasized enough that wet, sunny locations are the easiest sort for wild gardening. The soil tends to be soft, making weeding much easier, there are lots of vigorous native species that prosper if the most aggressive species are proactively controlled, and watering tends to take care of itself after the plants have established. It doesn't seem to matter if the soil has much in the way of nutrients. In fact, poor soil can help limit rambunctious weeds, and it's better if the water running through these basins doesn't pick up nutrients that then would end up downstream in Carnegie Lake.

Hands-On Learning About Invasiveness in Plants

Environmental science teacher Jim Smirk brought his kids outdoors this spring to do some hands-on learning at the Princeton High School's very own ecolab wetland. Most people would call it a detention basin, but we planted it long ago with native wetland species that thrive on the beneficent, dependable offerings of the high school's sump pump. Yes, a lowly sump pump provides the consistent water flow that drives this lush community of plants. Without it, most of the plant species, along with the frogs and crayfish, would die out the next time a long drought came along.

Jim enlisted me to provide some history on the planting to three of his classes, and also to explain why this manmade detention basin does such a good job of hosting wetland plants and animals. Like any garden, even a fairly wild one, it still needs intervention to maintain balance, since some of the native species tend to take over. Cattails, lizard's tail, and the native sunflowers spread aggressively underground, while the willows pop up in new places and quickly grow, hogging the sunlight.

Some of the more adventurous students donned waders and began digging up short- and broadleafed cattails so that some of the less aggressive sedges and wildflowers wouldn't be overwhelmed.

Others cut back willow, and removed a non-native plant called starwort that gained a foothold a couple years ago.

The students showed a lot of spirit, and were surprised that working in the mud could actually be fun.

Thanks to Mr. Smirk and his environmental science students for helping keep this wetland thriving right next to Princeton High School.

When Regulation Simplifies Our Lives

Many reflexively contend that regulation makes life harder, more complicated and constricting, and less convenient. And yet, here, in a packed room of people who wanted to learn more about invasive species, was ample evidence of how complicated an unregulated world becomes. Though many imported plant and animal species do not become invasive, the ones that do become a problem that each individual is then left to contend with. Uncontrolled transport of wood for packing crates coming from Asia, for instance, allowed the emerald ash borer to take hold in Michigan, and spread across the eastern U.S., causing millions of homeowners inconvenience and expense as the ash trees in our yards succumb. 

The same holds true for recycling. Because manufacturers can package their products in an endless variety of plastics, metals and papers, each one of us is then imposed upon to compare each piece of empty packaging to a long list of do's and don't's--a daunting project for even the passionate recycler. Packaging is geared towards maximizing purchase and convenience of consumption, leaving in its wake a hugely complex post-consumer dilemma that complicates our lives and fills our landfills and oceans with trash. Why not, instead, require all packaging be widely, easily, and demonstrably recycled, and expect manufacturers to use their ingenuity to figure out how to comply?

These are the sorts of quandaries that pack the community room at the library. If there were no food safety standards, we'd probably be cramming into the library to find out how to identify diseased beef at the unregulated supermarket, just as we'll each be seeking help to deal with the complicating, destabilizing consequences of climate change.

Regulations, if done well, can greatly simplify our lives. That truth needs to be repeated on a regular basis.

A previous post dealt with some aspects of invasive species in Princeton. 

Garlic Mustard Pulling Party--Sunday, 10am

Join us this Sunday, June 11 at 10am, before the day heats up, to pull garlic mustard before its seedpods have a chance to burst. We'll have some refreshments on hand, the better to socialize while snipping off the seedpods. Veblen House is up the gravel driveway across the street from 443 Herrontown Rd, or walk up from the main Herrontown Woods parking lot off of Snowden (map here).

We should be able to get all the remaining garlic mustards--half having been pulled last week by volunteers. Garlic mustard is a biennial, meaning it bears seeds the second year and then dies. If we bag up all the seeds each year, the population will fade away, which is good news for native wildflowers we want to reestablish here next to Veblen House.

The first year, garlic mustard looks like this, gathering energy for the seedhead that it sends up the second year. The species was brought to America by European settlers wanting to have something green to eat in early spring, after the long winter. Unfortunately, the plant has very aggressively spread into nature preserves, crowding out native species. Even after several centuries, the wildlife still don't eat it enough to keep it in check.

Another invasive we'll cut back is wisteria. We have almost vanquished an acre-sized, kudzu-like clone of wisteria that just last year was smothering much of the garden and weakening trees. This year's mild followup is really important to starve the roots of any chance to rebound.

Bring hand-pruners and loppers, if you have them, gloves and work shoes. We'll also provide some tools.

Here's a weed we'll allow to grow: moth mullein, a few of which have popped up in the horse run next to the house.

Other projects of the Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW) to promote sustainable landscaping include caring for a detention basin at nearby Smoyer Park. The basin was converted from turfgrass to native grasses and wildflowers. FOHW is proactively removing highly aggressive weeds like Canada thistle and crown vetch before they can get established, and adding local native wildflowers like this Hibiscus moscheutos to increase diversity and color.

Using Flowers To Read a Landscape

Flowers, like fall colors, create a color-coded landscape that can provide a snapshot of trends in plant populations. Blooms have seemed especially abundant this spring, with native dogwoods and Rhododendrons laden with flowers, and now the elderberries, Korean dogwoods and catalpas showing profusion. Catalpas have a knack for sprouting along edges, then spreading their branches of elephant ear leaves (front right in photo), tubular flowers and long seed pods up and over everything else. The branches take interesting, gnarly shapes. When catalpas are in flower, it's easy to notice how they have gained dominance in that prime front-row seating along the edge of this clearing, on waste ground near the Princeton Shopping Center. The opening itself is being taken over by Chinese bushclover, which also tends towards exclusionary dominance.

Wild Gardening's Inspirations

Here's a garden for you. Let's call it an acre, plopped down in the middle of a broad expanse of ballfields at Smoyer Park. This, too, was mowed turf until last year, when Partners for Fish and Wildlife, partnering with the town of Princeton and the Friends of Herrontown Woods, converted it to a native wet meadow.

Normally, these conversions, if they can be said to be normal at all (given that the vast majority of detention basins in New Jersey are curiously barren depressions in the landscape, a sort of make-work program for mowing crews) would involve a plant-and-run approach. The turf would be killed and disked, the native grass and wildflowers scattered, followed by a couple years of wait and see.

In my experience, though, the first two years are defining, a time when attention should be paid, lest the weeds gain the upper hand. The power of aggressive, mostly nonnative weeds to invade can be seen in countless backyard gardens and utility right of ways taken over by the likes of mugwort, canada thistle, crown vetch, and a host of others. The seeding of the basin came in spotty, leaving expanses of bare dirt. What fills that void determines the botanical fate of this wet meadow. There's gardening to be done here, wild gardening, like backyard gardening but on a grander scale.

Can it be said that delinquent landscapes, like delinquent children, are saved only by a finer vision of what they might be? That vision may be weak within the child or landscape, but if it resides as well in someone who cares, as a kind of empathy, its transformative power can in time take wing. Thoughts like this bring back vague memories of a book by Eric Fromm.

(Note: retired librarian and Smoyer Park neighbor, Jan Johnson, helped me find the quote, from Fromm's book Escape From Freedom: “The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.” )
For the detention basin, that vision is fed by all the marshes and swamps and swales I've ever seen, one of which lies just down the hill from the basin.

There, sensitive fern and jewelweed flourish on seepage at the toe of the slope.

Soft rush shows off its vase-like, evergreen form. Abetted by favorable hydrology, these grow on their own. The same can be wished for the basin, that early intervention can lead to self-sufficiency. This is the philosophy of schools, but such followup with landscape plantings is considered impractical. The planting is funded. The followup is not.

Back in the basin, two legumes sprout. In the foreground is partridge pea--a delayed sprouting from the original seed mix. It stays where it's planted. In the background, crown vetch, an aggressive nonnative that would spread and grow over the intended species.

Here's another crown vetch. What a pleasure it is to be able to weed it out in this early stage, before it becomes a tangle of despair.

Here's Canada thistle, identified and removed in its early stage, before it could spread and overwhelm the intended species,

as it has in so many places in town. In this garden, for example, in the Jugtown district of Princeton, the frontyard garden got invaded by Canada thistle, and the next thing you know, the house has been entirely gutted. Cause and effect? Never underestimate the power of a weed.

Other weeds in the basin may or may not pose a threat of longterm dominance. There's the fragrant Pineappleweed, rare in Princeton and perhaps a hitchhiker in the seed mix. And a plant that makes discreet, silver green pincushion shapes, more reminiscent of a desert landscape.

Along with the weeding, seeds of local native floodplain wildflowers have been raked into the bare ground, and some softrush, sensitive fern, rose mallow hibiscus, buttonbush, and cutleaf coneflower added. Some of these were later found pulled out, perhaps by the deer, to which I responded by replanting them close to other plants that might better disguise them.

Even with the deer causing some setbacks, wild gardening at this stage is satisfying, requiring relatively little work to achieve considerable longterm effect. People passing by, out for an evening walk or headed to their plot over at the community garden nearby, stop and show an interest. Some even offer to help. The peacefulness of the park, the light work amidst leisure, the green all around and big sky above, all this is good for the soul.

Informed followup is a given in most fields of care for living things, but somehow native plantings in public spaces have been expected to fend for themselves. We'll see how this interplay of living thing and vision plays out.

Invasive Plant Species in Princeton

This Monday, May 22 at 7pm, the Princeton Public Library will host a presentation on invasive species in Princeton by Mike van Clef, of the NJ Invasive Species Strike Team. There will also be representatives of FOPOS and DR Greenway participating. Princeton municipality hired Mike to develop a report on invasive species in Princeton preserves, and in 2016 he and two interns worked through the summer on invasive species control. Because of the massiveness of the problem, they focused on emerging species--those whose populations are still small enough that a summer's worth of control would make a difference. 

We may look back on 2016 as a pivotal year, when the town began investing in invasive species management, much as 2000 marked the beginning of professional deer management in town. 

Although it may sound self-congratulatory, another important date in Princeton's history of invasive species management would be 2006, when the Friends of Princeton Open Space hired me as their first Natural Resources Manager. 

When I arrived in town in 2003 on the coattails of my wife's appointment to the Princeton University faculty, a couple things quickly became obvious. First, Princeton had done wonderful work preserving land for open space. Second, the open space itself needed a lot of work. Though the trees in Princeton's woodlands were mostly native, the understory vegetation was often dominated by nonnative, invasive plants. Stiltgrass, honeysuckle and privet, to name but a few, had filled the void created long ago when the diverse native understory had been plowed under, back in Princeton's agricultural era. In the decades since, the native trees had rebounded, but the understory had either not come back, or succumbed to heavy browsing pressure from deer.

Because wildlife tend not to eat the leaves of nonnative plants, their proliferation in preserves renders the habitat largely inedible. Yes, birds can eat the berries of nonnative shrubs like honeysuckle, but if the insects and other wildlife aren't eating the leaves, then much less of the solar energy captured in the plants can move up the food chain. 

I proceeded to make the case that Princeton could expand its effective acreage of open space through management for native species. As most readers know, I've been leading workdays and nature walks ever since, for six years as an employee of FOPOS, and more recently as president of the Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW). Highly motivated volunteers like Tim Patrick-Miller and Andrew Thornton, and more recently Kurt and Sally Tazelaar at Herrontown Woods, have had a positive impact over time. Meanwhile, FOPOS has sustained its Natural Resources Manager position--having just hired the fourth to hold that position--and continues to do invasive species removal at Mountain Lakes Preserve. After so many years of nonprofit, largely volunteer efforts, to finally get municipal support through Mike's crew this past summer was a real boost that we hope will continue.  

It's important to note that Mike van Clef's study of invasive species in Princeton is limited to parks and preserves owned or managed by the town. There are large expanses of open space owned by the state (Princeton Battlefield and DR Canal) and by the Institute for Advanced Study (the 600 acre Institute Woods). Portions of the Battlefield and the DR Canal are being overrun by porcelainberry (in photo), which barely registers in Mike's survey, and mile-a-minute vine is beginning to show up there as well. I've been trying to help fill a void in management, co-leading workdays at the Battlefield and, in the proactive "early detection, rapid response" tradition, dealing with two small infestations of Mile-a-Minute in town before they become unmanageable. Another nonnative plant that's spreading rapidly, both in people's yards and in nature preserves, is lesser celandine (a.k.a. fig buttercup). It can only be controlled in the spring, long before summer interns begin work. Ideally, a town-wide coordination to manage invasive species would be developed.

The town's investment in invasive species control comes at a critical time. With the emerald ash borer (another highly invasive introduced species) poised to decimate Princeton's most numerous native tree, large gaps will be created in our forest canopy, allowing light to penetrate to the understory. Princeton's long investment in deer culling has allowed native shrubs like spicebush to make a comeback, but in many woodlands, the understory is dominated by nonnative shrubs and stiltgrass. Wildlife have evolved over millenia to eat native species. It's a question of whether edible natives will capture that extra sunlight in the understory, or the privet, winged euonymus, honeysuckle, barberry and Photinia. The foodchain depends on our intervention.

The primary argument for habitat management remains that, by improving the quality of habitat, Princeton effectively increases the functional acreage of open space. This is true not only for wildlife but also for people. Controlling invasive species also makes the human experience in preserves more rewarding. As we've cut down invasive shrubs at Herrontown Woods, we've not only made more sunlight, water and nutrients available for native species to prosper, but also have opened up pleasing vistas and made the woods more navigable. 

The problem of invasive plants may seem overwhelming, but we can take our inspiration from the deer, who transform landscapes through the cumulative impact of browsing here, there, and everywhere, one mouthful at a time. The pioneers, too, thought the continent too vast to ever tame. Though their goal wasn't exactly to increase native plant diversity, they showed how steady effort makes a difference over time. Ideally, professionals will complement existing volunteer efforts, and the locals who know the preserves best will help steer the professionals' interventions. 


At Monday's presentation, there will also be discussion of a list of invasive species that people are being discouraged from planting. It's a very long list, and I wish it could better reflect the broad spectrum of invasive behavior we see in the field. One reason the list is so long is that, though many of the species on the list may not be found spreading into Princeton's nature preserves, history shows that invasive behavior in nonnative species may not become manifest until many decades after they've been introduced. Chinese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis) is a case in point. Though it has yet to spread to Princeton's Tusculum meadows, it is now posing a big problem for meadows at Duke Farms up in Hillsborough. The flyer for the library event includes a photo of butterfly bush, which I've never observed exhibiting invasive behavior. Monday's presentation may help put local observations in a broader context.

Update: Full house for the program! Good to see.

Slapstick Cicada

This past week, as hot weather warmed the ground, cicadas emerged in their clown-like skins, with red eyes instead of red noses. Nature sightings can come in a moment of leisure, and this one came while sitting for a few minutes on the front step Friday afternoon. A few yards away, an adult cicada was crossing the stone walk, as determined as it was awkward, each tiny stick or leaf fragment presenting a formidable obstruction to progress for its bulky body. When it reached the garden bed, it clambered in and around the leaves, finally choosing a spent flower stalk as substrate for its vertical ambitions. With clumsy zeal, it climbed the narrow, flagpole-like flower stalk of a wood hyacinth. As it approached the top, the stem bent, so that by the time it reached the tip, the tip had tipped over and was no longer the top. The cicada, knowing up from down and desiring up above all, turned around and headed back up what moments before had been down. Relieved of the cicada's weight, the tip then straightened back up, leaving the cicada once again below the top. This could have gone on for quite awhile, as if the cicada had been born into a slapstick movie from the Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin era, with our frontyard serving as movie set.

Numerous on the leaves of the nearby frontyard raingarden were the spent skins from which the adults had emerged overnight. It's a beautiful transformation if you ever chance upon it.

Not being an entomologist, I can attest only to what I've read, that since these are emerging in spring, they must be the periodical cicadas--those that appear every 13 or 17 years en masse--a phenomenon unique to eastern North America. Annual cicadas, by contrast, emerge in summer and are found worldwide.

Perhaps the cicada, so intent on climbing, was seeking a good perch to sun itself, the better to harden its exoskeleton over the next few days.

We'll see if all this clambering gives rise to a great clamor in coming weeks.


Past posts on the subject can be found by typing "cicada" into the search box. Here are a few:

Cicadas "Clean up real good"
Cicada killers living peacefully among us
Struggle for Survival--Scene 1

When Rain is Welcome

A cool, rainy weekend for Mothers Day is good news in our backyard, where I planted a Rhododendron rescued from the foundation of a house not long for the world. It's hardwired in me to rescue all manner of abandoned items, to see potential in discards. That concept can be applied to anything from furniture left at the curb, to a house left boarded up in the woods, to the earth itself, which is being treated like a disposable oasis in the universe. A camera rescues images from oblivion. This blog fashions fleeting experiences into something lasting.

The Rhododendron and its timing were particularly serendipitous, because it's my wife's favorite plant in all the world. Other outdoor plants come and go, but the deep connection she feels for Rhododendrons brings joy when they prosper, and sorrow when they struggle. I managed to get this one in the ground on Friday, making the weekend's rain something to celebrate. We'll see if it endures, but at least in the short term, I've scored major spousal points.