October. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve seen my summertime favorites, hummingbirds and monarchs, which have no doubt departed on their southward migrations.
Looking back on the warmer months, watching caterpillars enjoy my plantings was a highlight—with one exception.
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In Alabama, where at least a hundred trees inhabited our lot, one of my favorite activities was lying on the porch swing, gazing up at the leaves as they danced in the breeze. Once, a Caroline wren landed on me as I lounged, perhaps mistaking the motionless tree-gazer for a log.
It’s taken some getting used to our yard in suburban Indianapolis, where lawn predominates.
To be fair, it’s not entirely treeless: three cherry trees were presumably planted about a decade ago when the house was built. Besides the cherries, the landscaping included clematis, daisies, daylilies, daffodils, hydrangeas, hostas, and weigela. Each of these ornamentals is an exotic, generally with origins in Eurasia, so, while beautiful, they don’t do much for the ecosystem.
Of course, the majority of the quarter-acre lot is covered by lawn, which was a pristine, sterile monoculture when we arrived, thanks to the prior owner’s fastidious attentions. We heard they killed voles to keep the grass safe.
Continue readingWalking in the woods, I see a field of pink phlox. A giant swallowtail butterfly pumps her wings beside a stream. As I swat mosquitos, signs along the path encourage me to consider this landscape in geological time, its current form molded by the glacier sheet that retreated some 12,000 years ago.
Time to contemplate time: 12,000 years, a moment to our 4.5-billion-year-old planet, yet an unfathomable ocean compared to my few droplets of decades.
Continue readingApril brings not only the loon on the retention pond, but the ephemeral woodland wildflowers in the Indiana parks. These flowers emerge before the trees have leafed out, and mostly disappear by summer, dormant until the following spring.
In my Alabama garden, I had planted one tiny ephemeral, Virginia spring beauty, admiring the pink pollen and stripes adorning the minute blooms. And then this spring I happened upon a field of thousands of spring beauties. Wandering through Columbus, Indiana, Sergey and I came upon a handsome park with mature trees towering over a lawn. Within the lawn grew endless spring beauties and violets.
In Sea-Tac Airport, hectic and congested, one gate opens a serene vision. Rising 33 feet across vast windows, “I Was Dreaming of Spirit Animals” introduced me to the folkloric glass painting of Cappy Thompson. I happened upon another of her installations, “Stars Falling on Alabama,” at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. And our most recent visit to the Seattle area brought me to the Museum of Glass, where I encountered her “Gathering the Light.” These bejeweled stories make me wish I could step inside.
In the Pacific Northwest, sojourners can step inside kingdoms of mossy forests and majestic mountains. A delicate balance kept these systems thriving for millennia. Salmon, for instance, feed other animals, people, and even trees with the nitrogen they bring inland from the ocean. The fish’s remains nourish not only predators and scavengers, but the roots of ancient plants.
A year ago, I enjoyed witnessing two of the tadpoles I’d been given develop into froglets and then big, beautiful frogs. Come winter, evidently, they managed to hibernate at the bottom of the pond, surviving even when a January cold snap coated the surface with an inch of ice.
By this spring, we’d had a year and a half together—me watching intently and hoping for their wellbeing, them tolerating my presence. I was intrigued when, one day, I noticed the two frogs wrestling. Shortly thereafter, while I sat on the porch in a rainstorm, I saw one of them hop away from the pond and across the yard—and that was that. Not so much as a parting ribbit.
Continue readingLast year, I heard a birdsong that astounded me with its melody. The Merlin app’s Sound ID told me it was a wood thrush, describing the call as haunting and flute-like. This spring, I was thrilled to hear the trill again: the wood thrush had made it back from his wintering grounds in Central America. I’ve never laid eyes on this bird since he stays in the most forested parts of the neighborhood, heightening the mystery of his wordless ballad.
After a June rainstorm, a magical flower blooms. It is exuberantly layered, an extravagant purple wedding cake on a vine by the side of the road. Petaled, fringed, striped, spotted—hypnotic. Bees feel as I do, transfixed, drawn to this short-lived blossom. This is maypop or purple passionflower, Passiflora incarnata, native to the Southeastern United States, though it looks like the kaleidoscopic creation of an otherworldly jungle.
For a while, the tadpoles made themselves invisible. But gradually, as winter turned to spring, they began showing themselves. Tiny legs grew, then lengthened.
By late spring, they’d metamorphosed into frogs. Now, breathing air and warming their cold-blooded bodies in the sun, the frogs perched atop stones, allowing me to count them: four tadpoles had survived to froghood.
Continue readingWater and stones alone do not make a healthy pond. It needs plants, which provide habitat for animals and filter nutrients out of the water, keeping it clearer and resistant to algal blooms. Plus, when you fill a pond with plants, you can call it a “water garden,” conjuring images of fragrant blossoms nodding at their reflections in limpid pools. Ideally, a pond will have both plants that live fully in the water—submerged plants rooted to the bottom as well as floating ones—and marginal (or “emergent”) plants that live on the banks in perpetually damp soil.
Layli Maria Miron 