The Village Grows

 The Fort Street Pollinator Habitat has become quite the happening place, with heliopsis and rudbeckia getting much taller than such plants have any right to be--and unfortunately, sometimes collapsing under their own weight--

Keeled-over heliopsis

but blooming anyway.

with their persistent blooms

Perhaps the most exciting growth, though, was the team of volunteers that came out earlier this month to create a mowing edge of bricks salvaged from a to-be-demolished building. When the bricks were offered by the building's owner a few weeks ago, some dedicated workers used crowbars and brute strength to remove them from the old floor, load them onto a truck, and unload them in a storage area made available by the church across the street from the habitat. On September 17, workers, tractors, and trailers materialized, and the bricks were moved to their new location.

At least twenty-one people showed up early on a misty Saturday morning to make this project happen. They included members of a church committee, the Rotary Club,

the leadership program of a local college,               

a teenager and his grandmother,

general community members, and a City Council representative. The team had an age range of more than seven decades. 

Our crew worked hard

but managed to have some fun along the way.

Photo courtesy of Marsha Ward

Some senior pictures were taken while the staircase was being weeded.

And in roughly four hours, the team dug out and installed edging along the habitat's 285-foot length.

A project that started with a discussion in a church basement and five geriatric committee members pinning solarization plastic to a slippery slope has become something else entirely. Volunteers from three community organizations, several faith communities, and the neighborhood have engaged in several work days on the site. Our small city has provided land and invaluable logistical support. Some local businesses have donated materials.

And nature is doing the rest. What had been a hillside of invasive Johnson grass and poison ivy is now home to bumblebees butterflies, and songbirds, and gives humans a reason to stop and take pictures.

Why old people should perhaps reconsider their leisure(?) activities

Yesterday I spent two hours at the pollinator habitat with a young friend, engaged in the ongoing attempt to keep bindweed, hairy crabgrass, and poison ivy at bay. The two hours resulted in areas that actually contained only plants we wanted, 

like Rudbeckia and hardy ageratum

or heliopsis and aster

but as any gardener knows, a weeder's work is never done. Even though some of my aging muscles were reminding me that they are not fond of working on hills, this weekend is taking me out of town, so this morning found me back at the habitat, with more bags to fill with unwanted vegetation.

     The work went well. Bindweed ripped out easily, crabgrass gave up its grip on the soil, excess zinnias got deadheaded. But as I progressed along the top of the slope, I noticed that a number of large, unfamiliar plants had infiltrated the site and were in some cases taller than I am. Given the propensity of large plants to shade out young things that we actually planted, and given that these invaders looked ready to go to seed, Something Had to Be Done.

   Having left my digging fork further up the bank, the ground being soft from an earlier rain, and being somewhat of the lazy persuasion, I opted to give one of the invaders a good yank to see if it would come up on its own. This was not one of my more brilliant ideas. 

     I had stepped out of the mulched area and onto the top of the slope itself. The ground being soft, yours truly being no longer young, and my stance being undoubtedly less than balanced, my attempt to uproot the plant found various body parts making contact with the (fortunately soft) ground, further cushioned by vegetation (fortunately, none of it poison ivy or stinging nettle). I managed not to slide too far down the hill, and no glasses or human body parts were broken. Alas, the same could not be said of the aster and echinacea on which I landed, though at least the Polygonum was one of the invasive types.

Casualties of the weed war

     Already on the ground and partway down the slope, I took advantage of the position to remove more bindweed, crabgrass, and Asiatic dayflower. After achieving verticality (a most ungraceful process, which fortunately had no human witnesses), I got revenge on the invaders by removing all I could safely reach, bringing up the entire root systems. However, what I had thought was the wild lettuce on Ohio's list of noxious weeds turned out to be Erechtites hieraciifolius, our native fireweed and an enthusiastic colonizer of disturbed sites. Since it has very little pollinator value, I was not terribly troubled by its demise--and am sure it will be back. 

     But I did find myself thinking--why exactly do I do this?