Leaving No Child Inside

Yet again, it has been a long time between posts. Probably to no one's surprise, I am getting lazier as I age and enjoying way too many afternoons with a cold drink and a good book after a morning of park and neighborhood wandering. The title of today's post is taken from the work of Richard Louv , who back in 2005 warned of the danger of "nature deficit disorder," especially to children.

Merida, where I have spent several winters and where I write this, is not known as a particularly "green" city. Back when a group of Spanish marauders took over the Mayan city of T'oh in 1572, the perceived problem was keeping nature at bay, not losing all contact with it, and neighborhoods were built at a density that would be illegal in many US cities today. (That is a different rant.) These days, however, the colonial-era "white city" is undergoing something of a green renaissance.

In 2016, Merida developed a green infrastructure plan that is worth exploring in detail at some time, but today, I want to lift up child-friendly park development. The concept is nothing new here: in 1910, the city opened its Parque del Centenario as part of the celebration of Mexico's hundred years as an independent country.

This very urban park at the intersection of two heavily-traveled streets began as a botanical garden but added playgrounds and a zoological park later in its history, and while urban zoos are hardly ideal settings for the animals they house (and one could argue that no zoo is), Centenario to me seems to be filling an important function: it provides central-city children with access to century-old trees and at least an introduction to wildlife--FOR FREE. The animals' enclosures are relatively large, the place is clean, and in my visits few creatures have been exhibiting depressed behaviors. The old trees attract numbers of Merida's wild birds as well; I saw my first summer tanager from a bench in this park. It is not a perfect place, but it is always full of families.

The same is true of Merida's more modern zoo, Animaya. A recent visit on a weekday found the playground busy, the various walkways through the exhibits well-traveled, and the range of human ages well-represented. The park itself is free to enter, and experiences that take visitors closer to some of the larger wildlife exhibits are not prohibitively expensive--5 pesos (approximately 30 cents USD) for the boat ride around the monkeys' island, the train around the larger terrestrial exhibits, or the guided tour around the grassland areas. The city is encouraging visits through the free bus service it calls the Adventure Route, connecting the two zoos with other parks in the western part of town. Even families with limited incomes have access to these imagination- and empathy-expanding activities. (Would that more places would do the same.)

And it's not just zoos. A major city project is Ya'ax'tal, dubbed "the great lung of Merida" which, when complete, will stretch for fifteen kilometers and incorporate not only green space but a bicycle path, concert spaces, and numerous areas for active play. When a friend and I visited recently, we found migratory birds passing through despite the youth of most of the trees. This "paseo verde" is surrounded by residential areas on all sides and is within walking distance of 150,000 Merida residents. In the central city, the old railroad yard has become the Parque de la Plancha, already called "Merida's Central Park," though it is not nearly as large as Olmsted's masterpiece. With walk/bike trails of three different lengths, playgrounds for children of different ages, a skate park, two dog parks, pollinator plantings, and three thousand recently-planted young trees, it is an impressive place.

An older park in a definitely non-tourist neighborhood, the Parque Ecologico del Poniente is home to herons, wood storks, and trees that would have entranced my child self. (What am I saying? They entrance my senior-citizen self.) We frequently hop the local bus to go see what is blooming and which birds and butterflies are active. Here is one of my favorite trees, a flamboyan more than forty feet in height with a spread of perhaps twice that.

One of the most impressive aspects of these Merida parks is that entrance is free of charge, making them available to all. In addition, they are accessible by low-cost or even free public transport, and all are in fairly dense neighborhoods. If we want more children to be outside, we need to make it easy for them to be there. Merida seems to be taking that charge seriously.

Another great tropical plant--in the right place

Visiting Merida's Parque Ecologico del Poniente yesterday, ostensibly for birding, my companion and I found ourselves zeroing in on a shrub buzzing with insects. I had hoped to get a photo of one of the giant bumblebees packing quite the saddlebags, but they were uncooperative, so I had to settle for this handsome little Ornidia orbesa, a syrphid commonly known as the green jewel fly.

Besides flies and multiple bee species, this not-particularly-striking shrub was hosting a variety of lepidoptera, leading to the eternal question: what is this thing?

Our mystery plant was identified as Pluchea carolinensis, native to the American tropics and known to English-speaking colonists as "cure for all," "bush fleabane," and "cough bush," giving some sense of its uses by humans. According to an article in Economic Botany, in the Caribbean it has been associated with a Santeria deity and used in spiritual cleansings, as well as for more mundane ailments such as coughs, colds, and inflammations. I have yet to discover if the plant has a Mayan name, which would indicate its use in traditional medicine here.

But it is obviously a plant useful to local insects, and a close look at the flower structure indicates why. 

Each of what at first glance appears to be a flower is actually a cluster of tiny flowers similar to those of Appalachia's common boneset--no surprise, given that they are cousins in the aster family. All those flowers make for LOTS of pollen and nectar and, ultimately, lots of seeds. And here is where plant placement is important.

Pulchea is a pioneer plant, meaning that it happily roots itself anyplace where conditions are right; in this case, in any convenient patch of bare dirt. In its extensive native range, this is not a problem as the local fauna, including the humans, make use of it, and it is kept under control by all of its enthusiastically-growing tropical plant neighbors. Unfortunately, in other places, especially Hawaii and other Pacific islands, it is a serious invasive, crowding out native species and degrading habitat for island wildlife. This attractive medicinal plant is another example of why we humans need to be careful with what we allow into our gardens: in the places where it belongs, it is a good and useful plant, but allowed to spread in places where it is not native, it can be a serious thug.

And it needs a new name, as it does not occur in the Carolinas.

Source mentioned: Hodges, S., Bennett, B.C. The Ethnobotany of Pluchea carolinensis (Jacq.) G. Don (Asteraceae) in the Botánicas of Miami, Florida. Econ Bot 60, 75–84 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1663/0013-0001(2006)60[75:TEOPCJ]2.0.CO;2

Treasures of the jungle

     Before arriving at our house in Merida, my travel companions and I spent two nights in Campeche, now the eponymous capital of that state, and a beautiful city in its own right. We stayed in the heart of the old town, surrounded by walls built in the 1600s to protect against the (mostly English) pirates. These days the city walls and gates are primarily tourist attractions, as is the 18th-century cannon, now pointed at streetlights and utility poles rather than marauders bent on plunder.

Photo courtesy of Elin Jones

     We all agreed that Campeche is worth a return visit, but the real focus of our trip was a three-day tour of the Calakmul jungle and ruins with Chelita Travel. In my initial emails with the company, I neglected to give certain specifics about our group--like the fact that our youngest traveler was sixty-six, the oldest eighty-one, and that among us we have a variety of (probably mostly age-related, though one hates to admit such a thing) physical complaints. We did not want to scare the company away.

     We need not have worried. Our guide turned out to be Wilberth Pech, co-owner of the company with his wife Berenice, and perfect company for us. Not only was he unfazed by travel with our geriatric gaggle, he is passionate about Mayan history and a competitive birder (yes, there is such a thing); in our time together, he led us to the haunts of toucans, trogons, tityras, and the stunningly gorgeous ocellated turkey endemic to the Yucatan peninsula. 

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

Unfortunately, this relative of Ohio's wild turkey is threatened due to habitat loss and over-hunting by human groups trying to survive in this not-always-hospitable part of the Americas. One hope of some people in the region is that the expansion of tourism brought on by the Mayan Train and the recognition of Calakmul as a Mixed World Heritage Site will lead to both increased prosperity for locals and a deeper appreciation of this special place.

     And the Calakmul region is special. Best-known as the home of the powerful Snake Kingdom of the Mayan Classic period, the Mayan cities in this area date back nearly 2500 years, prior to the Golden Age of ancient Greece. After the large cities were abandoned sometime during what in Europe is called the Middle Ages, the jungle took back its own, a process that continues today.

     But the buildings remain, and they are spectacular. We visited multiple sites over our three days and often had them completely to ourselves. (Why anyone feels the need for Disney when actual ancient temples and palaces can be visited almost for free is beyond me.) The triple towers of Xpujil were perhaps my favorite structures,

but two of our number braved the climb at Calakmul, (I was not one of them.) 

This best-known of all the sites on our trip did have perhaps a dozen other visitors the day we were there, and of course, one of them was on the same pyramid.

    Our three days flew by and at the same time felt like an academic semester in terms of the information presented. Though we were ready to collapse by the time we got to our hotel at the end of Day Three, we were already talking about when and how to explore more of this beautiful and historic part of the world. 

Not-always-easy coexistence

     Yesterday I wrote about how glad I am to see people and other life forms coexisting even in what for me is a big city, and that is basically true, but Merida being in the tropics, we are doing battle with the ants. I have no problem with ants, generally, but prefer that they stay out of any kitchen in which I spend time. To that end, we came down with ziplock plastic food storage bags (even though plastic is a problem) and bought extra resealable storage containers as soon as we got here. Anything that vaguely resembles food goes immediately into a storage container or the refrigerator. And still they come. 

     It turns out that a tree present in neighbors' back yards is a preferred ant habitat. Cecropia obtusifolia, known here as guarumo, is an impressive thing, reaching a height of fifty feet or more and possessing clusters of spreading, palmate leaves that rustle nicely in the wind. (I am enjoying the sound right now.) It has interesting, if not particularly showy, male and female flowers borne on the same branch.

Photo courtesy of the Field Museum

     And, here at least, it attracts birds, especially grackles and woodpeckers, though other species show up. This morning I spent some time watching three different grackles and a Yucatan woodpecker assiduously scarfing down something found on the bark and leaves of the Cecropia next door. The woodpecker was close enough that, with the decent binoculars I finally bought for myself, I could actually see its tongue. (And if you have never looked up information on woodpecker tongues, you should.)

    It turns out that what all these birds are consuming is multitudes of ants, several species of which use this tree as habitat. The long leaf stems are hollow and provide colony sites for certain ants in the genus Azteca, while the leaves and bark crevices provide shelter. Since Yucatan is about to move into its dry season, leaves are drying out and falling onto the patio of our rental house, bringing with them lots of ants. While these are not the ants generally found in kitchens, I can imagine these insect householders being confused and wandering when suddenly displaced.

     Fortunately, there are relatively simple ways to discourage most varieties of ants from sharing our spaces too closely, so for now, we can coexist and enjoy all the other creatures attracted by this one-tree habitat.

Coexistence in the city

     This winter finds me back in Merida for the first time since 2020, my last Yucatan winter having been spent next to Progreso's western dunes. My winter travel companion, a serious wildlife photographer, and I opted for the city to facilitate bus travel to some of the parks in this area, but several Covid infections in our circle have caused some activity restrictions while we waited to complete post-exposure testing. So far, we are both Covid-free and remain grateful for vaccines, good masks, and CDC advice on precautions.

     We are also grateful for the AirBnB we found. While this is a busy neighborhood within walking distance of the even busier main plaza and several other areas popular with visitors, it is a neighborhood where homeowners have planted trees, making our front and back terraces good for birdwatching while sipping coffee in our nightwear. 

Yes, we had a "cold" spell--nights below 60 degrees.

And we are indeed seeing birds. White-fronted parrots fly over the house every morning, and great-tailed grackles and white-winged doves are ubiquitous. (Fortunately, we are fond of both, as they are extremely vocal birds.) Yellow-lored parrots occasionally check out a tree across the street. A pair of doves was building a nest in a tree adjacent to the back terrace, but that activity seems to have stopped when one of the pair vanished. A VERY enthusiastic pink-flowering vine is beginning to attract hummingbirds, and one day a motmot visited a neighbor's bamboo.

     Orioles are fairly frequent visitors. We think this handsome creature is an orange oriole, endemic to the Yucatan peninsula. 

Photo by Kate Fitzgerald

Every day brings woodpeckers checking for insects in nearby trees. In previous years, Yucatan has been entering its dry season when I have visited, but the rains continued through most of December, leaving lots of leaves, buds, flowers, and (unfortunately for some human sinuses) pollen. But the insects and insectivorous birds are happy.

Photo by Kate Fitzgerald

Despite the popularity of non-native ornamentals like the bougainvillea planted in every third yard and snagging unwary walkers on its thorns, we are finding Yucatecan native plants used in a number of city gardens. In front of the 18th-century Iglesia de San Juan Bautista (Church of St. John the Baptist, for those with even less Spanish than I), pollinators were all over a gorgeous pink-flowering bush,

which a little research revealed to be the native Ipomoea carnea, or bush morning glory. The plant, while toxic to cattle (which did not evolve in this part of the world anyway), was used in rituals, for pipemaking, and as medicine. Obviously, it is also important to insects, as this gall-covered leaf indicates. (Unfortunately, I have not yet discovered what species make use of this plant.)

     It always pleases me to see wildness in places long inhabited by humans. The church that was home to the Sanjuanista reform movement of the early 1800s is a latecomer to this area, but I find it beautiful anyway. We will be visiting again to see what other creatures make use of this small urban park.

The Year When Not Much Got Done (?)

         Certainly, 2023 did not see me doing much blogging, and it was a year when a distressing number of projects did not advance much. Equally certainly, it was a difficult year: a wonderful young man who poured his heart and energy into the pollinator habitat project died suddenly in April, while the friend who started several solar projects in Marietta and was fading away from dementia died in June. Other friends dealt with cardiac problems, memory loss, falls, and other of the ills to which flesh is heir, and I myself had several health crises, all resolved but all reminders that the body fails with time. Nothing unusual or unexpected in human life, but never easy when it's your turn.

    And of course, life went on despite our losses and struggles. The pollinator habitat did not get as much human attention as it has sometimes gotten, so particular plants became excessively enthusiastic and had eventually to be cut back or thinned to make room for less space-hungry neighbors. (Are you listening, Silphium perfoliatum?) What had been an open mulched space between the bottom of the slope and the shrub border filled in with partridge pea, evening primrose, cosmos, wingstem, violets, and what proved to be saw-toothed sunflower, a ten-foot yellow daisy with purple stems.

     The site's fauna had no problems with the perhaps-excessive plant growth. While people in some parts of the county reported seeing few bees, they were all over our site all the time,

along with butterflies, moths, beetles, caterpillars, and quite an assortment of birds, including gaggles of goldfinches. After a hard frost left most of the site's vegetation looking less than its best, the little brown birds moved in to forage among the stems and on the ground.

     And, thinking back, the human involvement did not stop. The city approved the planting of a memorial garden honoring our late volunteer and the couple who first gardened the site many years ago. Though work on that part of the site has only begun, neighbors and others, including children of the late couple, have donated plants. In April, Marietta's mayor joined a Girl Scout troop in planting an apple tree as one of the first additions to the memorial garden.

Mayor Josh Schlicher and Girl Scouts, photo by Nancy Taylor of the Marietta Times

Other amenities for humans have been added. Thanks to a health department grant, the habitat has a one-of-a-kind bench designed by local artist Todd Morrow.

     Along the riverbank below the habitat, the city has installed two more benches, giving the human users of the site multiple places to rest and enjoy river and habitat views. Across the river, behind Marietta's Armory Square, the solar charging bench that was part of the initial grant project was installed along the river trail and dedicated in November. Almost from day one, users of the trail have topped off their phone batteries while recharging themselves along the river. 

     Hmmm. It might be more accurate to say that this particular human did not get much done. Other things are moving along just fine.

Loving it, but. . .

Our part of Ohio has moved beyond being "unseasonably warm." Yesterday a birthday gathering in the neighborhood found a group of women over sixty sitting outdoors in short sleeves as the temperature was still over seventy--at 6:00 PM--IN FEBRUARY. According to an article in today's Guardian, southern Ohio and many other Eastern regions are seeing spring conditions earlier than at any time since record-keeping began.

Part of me welcomes the warmth, my bones and breathing not doing well in cold. I love being able to pick daffodils on a sunny afternoon,

and the year's first creeping veronica is always a cheerful-making sight.

But--it's February. February should not be springtime in Ohio. As welcome as warm weather and spring flowers are, plant growth needs to sync with the needs of wildlife. You might notice the pollen on the veronica petals in the photo above: unfortunately, I have yet to see a single pollinating insect. If our native spring bloomers (which neither of the aforementioned plants is) bloom early, before some of the specialist pollinators emerge, these insects that depend on particular plant species may not survive. If other less specialized insects emerge and manage to reproduce early, before migratory birds start on their day-length-dependent journeys, those birds may discover reduced food supplies. Nesting birds may not find the protein-rich larvae on which the young of nearly all species depend. 

February should not be tick season in Ohio, but ticks are already being reported, and at least one acquaintance has had to seek medical attention for a tick bite. Yuck.

And did I mention hay fever? Earlier springs and later falls mean longer growing seasons, with more plants' seasons overlapping, resulting in more types of pollen in the air for longer periods of time. This is not good news for allergy sufferers.

As much as I love spring, these are worrisome signs.

Is it spring yet?

     I don't think so, given that the temperature this morning was a decidedly non-balmy 19 degrees, and the snow from earlier this week has not melted. According to Punxsatawny Phil the weather rodent, we will have six more weeks of winter, but to the ancient Irish,  February 1 and/or 2 marked the beginning of spring. (Hey, calendars have been revised over the years.)

    Having just checked the weather in the parts of Ireland where various ancestors lived, I see that it is warmer there than here this week with lows generally in the forties, weather that could perhaps charitably be interpreted as springlike. The dating of spring to early February seems to be related to the reproductive cycles of the sheep that were of such economic importance, providing wool, meat, and milk to the inhabitants of the island. The earliest lambs are born about now, and the ewes begin to lactate. Imbolc, as the day was known, was celebrated with foods made with milk, cheese, or butter (a tradition I can definitely manage). Pancakes with blackberry jam were also traditional (and probably not happening at my house, though I do need to use up some sour milk, and wonder if blueberries might do. . . ).

    People being unlikely to give up their celebrations, Feb. 2 became a Christian holiday honoring St. Patrick's friend St. Brigid, who may or may not have been the same as the ancient Celtic goddess. (And since she was a protector of the people and associated with poetry and learning, and Patrick seems to have had good intentions, I can almost imagine them collaborating.) The ancient practices continued, and a few more got added, such as collecting alms for the poor.

    This year, the Republic of Ireland has made Imbolc/St. Brigid's Day a national public holiday, the first named after a woman. Celebrations there include music by Irish women, since Brigid was a patron of the arts. 

    Listening to Irish music and eating pancakes with butter--much more my kind of celebration than heading to a lambing shed in the middle of the night. 

'Tis the season

for anticipation, and I don't mean of sugarplums and the like. Our erratic January weather finds some living beings in our neighborhood anticipating spring. One human neighbor was jogging in shorts on a fifty-degree day. (There's always one.) Wrens are singing as if their fancies are already turning to thoughts of love, though January seems a bit early for that.

While it is not surprising that the crocuses are sending up leaves, January is not generally daffodil season. Evidently, no one shared that information with some of the bulbs in our lawn strip, a few of which are already attempting bloom stalks.

I fear that that specimen may not survive to bloom in April. The volunteer shepherd's purse behind it would likely survive any disaster.

Some of the tulips are getting in on the act.

Even the moss transplanted from a brick wall to the lawn strip last fall is sending up what I think are sporophytes, preparing to colonize more of Sacra Via (assuming it can overcome the ground ivy).

According to the calendar, spring will not arrive for fifty days, but some beings are more than ready for it.

The Year in Review

Social media posts this year seemed to report many of us being in a funk, bogged down by a sense of general malaise, and I have to confess that I have found myself more “doless” (to use my mother's wonderful Appalachian term) than usual. Whether this is pandemic hangover, trying to reenter a world in which figuring out what is “normal” or safe is tiring, political exhaustion, or something else is difficult for me to say. Certainly, I have not been writing much this year.

Like most years, 2022 has been a mix, and as seems inevitable, there have been losses: early in the year, a dear former student and a colleague died unexpectedly, one of heart failure and one of Covid. In the spring, a friend lost her husband and her mother within a month. Later in the year, three church friends died, one hit by a car crossing the highway one Saturday evening. A dear friend on the next block went into an emotional collapse when the dog she knows will be her last died, and our two eldest felines have begun what are likely their final declines. All the aforementioned non-humans were or are elderly, but there is something especially poignant about watching the slow fade of an animal whose adolescence one remembers.

My gardening groove never quite returned after the trauma of the gas line replacement and the loss of a foot of topsoil. Some of the poor plants dug up in the rescue attempt were being put back in the ground in late November, and a few unfortunates are still in pots and may or may not survive the winter. The gardener's lack of enthusiasm was compounded by an incorrect move while loading a large shrub and the discovery of previously undiagnosed spinal problems, fortunately nothing particularly serious but definitely annoying and limiting. Aren't we supposed to be able to keep Doing the Things as long as we want?

Looking at 2022 as a whole, though, many good things happened. During the Yucatan winter (which I will miss this year due to the failing felines), more Ohio friends got to experience that much-loved place. 

One configuration of “us” rescued a puppy before it could become crocodile food,

and  the little guy became the companion of a child dying of cancer and, eventually, of the child's mother.

Another week, a group of Wild Women celebrated a friend's 80^th birthday with a trip to Rio Lagartos. On our boat trip to various parts of that bioreserve, our nature guide's friend did a live broadcast for his radio show. Back in Ohio, a Minnesota friend visited during the May warbler migration, so of course a visit to Magee Marsh was required.  

The rest of the year, which featured no getaways of more than two nights, brought get-togethers with extended family and short explorations of eastern Ohio treasures like Cuyahoga Valley National Park, no slouch in the natural beauty department. 

Even closer to home, 2022 was a good year for Marietta projects. Through the work of our city administration and engaged (not to say stubborn) citizens, there has been progress toward improved pedestrian safety and increased public transportation. Our water and wastewater treatment systems will be getting much-needed overhaul. The pollinator habitat has expanded, its projects attracting a variety of volunteers (not to mention pollinators). It is likely that there will be accessibility improvements in the fairly near future. The Harmar Bridge butterfly garden is doing well in its first year, and the small butterfly garden in a tiny downtown park had a very good year. 

A landscape steward who recently moved back to our area in retirement has organized crews to remove invasive plants and collect, sort, and plant native seeds in nearby protected wild areas. Good things are in the offing.

And from any sort of historical perspective, most of us alive in the US today are living easier and longer lives than most of our homo sapiens ancestors. Some details mixed with personal reflection:

• Yes, Covid has caused a recent drop in average life expectancy, but most of us will live into our seventies or beyond, not the 47.3-year average at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1900, of 100,000 children born, 2000 would die before their fifth birthday. Today, that number is fewer than 25.

• 2022 was the year that found me older than my first husband lived to be (which a friend had warned me is a rather unsettling milepost) and, when I stopped to think about it, older than most of the writers I taught in my career. Leaving out the whole crew of those who died unarguably young (Marlowe, Shelley, Keats, at least two of the Brontës), writers often did not survive to what we think of as old age: Chaucer died at sixty, Shakespeare in his fifties, all the lady lyricists who were the favorite poets of my adolescent years by their mid-fifties, Thoreau at forty-four, and Austen at forty-one. They got a lot done in not a lot of time, but I suspect most would have welcomed more time

• 99.5% of us have indoor plumbing. As a child born in rural Scioto County, Ohio, in the 1950s, I was in the third grade before we lived in a home with a flush toilet. (And I do NOT miss the good old days of outhouses.)

• My family got our first telephone in 1966. It was a party line. When I was in college in the Seventies, the dorm had one phone for the 24 girls on our floor. Being in constant contact with anyone was impossible, and video chat was something out of science fiction. When someone moved away, staying in touch took real effort. Today, we can talk to anyone, nearly anywhere, pretty much whenever we want.

• Most of the world was rightly horrified by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the likely war crimes that have been committed. For most of the last five thousand or so years, war and invasion were more common than not. There was a reason for all those European castles, and it wasn't to serve as backdrop for Disney films.

So my resolution for 2023 is to work on my sense of perspective. If these are not the best of times, they are probably also not the worst. 

Life goes on

 at the habitat, even at the end of November. Yesterday afternoon found a few insects making use of the late blooms despite our already having had one snow. A yellow butterfly (some kind of sulphur) refused to be photographed, but a very skittery skipper did finally settle down to feed on a Drummond's aster, though it still would not position itself to enable an ID.

The asters were still reasonably plentiful and in reasonable bloom.

Hoverflies were still hovering (though not cooperating with the photographer), and chipping sparrows and other small birds were making use of the site, no doubt because of the plethora of seeds.

Goldenrod

Sunflower

New England aster

The shrubs in the new shrub border seem to be loaded with buds, and while we will no doubt have to remove some in the spring, the spotted dead nettle has come back and will provide some of the earliest blooms for the earliest pollinators.

The end of the showy season does not mean that nothing is happening; we just need to pay a little closer attention to see what is there.

Perhaps the wrong name

A few days ago, walking the downtown river trail, I came across a Buddleia davidii, commonly called butterfly bush, in full bloom, even in mid-October. 

Who could not love that color? And while there were not many butterflies out on a chilly fall morning, the bush was hosting several fat bumblebees, of which, unfortunately, I did not get a decent photograph. And who doesn't love bumbles? Even this late in the season, the plant's leaves were in pristine condition, not a single spot or hole.

What's not to like?

Plenty. Butterfly bush is actually not a good butterfly plant. Yes, it provides a gorgous, sweet-smelling snack bar for adult butterflies over a long season, but those perfect leaves are a tip-off: this plant feeds not a single North American caterpillar, AKA baby butterfly. When we give this exotic plant a home in our yards, we are in fact reducing butterfly habitat, which must include space to reproduce if we want more generations of the fluttering creatures we purport to love. To make the case against buddleia even more strongly, more than 95% of North American songbirds feed their young almost exclusively on caterpillars: planting the misnamed "butterfly bush" also reduces the reproductive capacity of the birds whose nestlings will starve without the fat and protein provided by caterpillars. A single brood of chickadees, to give just one example, requires between 6000 and 9000 caterpillars before they can leave the nest. Earthworms are no good, being another non-native species providing little nutritional value.

This is what a leaf on a useful plant should look like in fall (unless of course it has been completely munched): spotted and full of holes.

If some of these leaves are turned over, they will reveal eggs or larvae hiding on the underside.

Something hiding on a riverside silver maple

I know that our gardening instinct calls for perfect, unblemished  plants, but nature requires imperfection and transience. Plants must be chewed for animals to live, and we bipedal primates require the interaction of plants, animals, and microbes for our own thriving.

Filling a yard with "butterfly bush" is the equivalent of feeding a child a diet of nothing but gummy bears. 

The plant needs a new name. The real "butterfly bush" is an oak, but that is a subject for another post.

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.