Have you seen...

Garden Sunrise

A vine has covered my garden in the way that daylight creeps across the yard—
from the first tender rays in one corner, stretching and fanning out until only a few spots remain untouched, those safely hidden behind another.
If it were any other, I would pull it—yank its long reaching arms and winding fingers from my vegetable patch, where a few withering pumpkin plants struggle beneath the heat of an early August afternoon.
But it is milkweed.
Sand Vine.

Sand Vine, Cynanchum laeve
the other milkweed

This climbing milkweed, Cynanchum laeve, with its heart-shaped leaves trimmed pink at the stem and clusters of delicate white flowers spaced along its length feeds more Monarchs than the tough and leathery common milkweed standing just feet away in my field.

Sand Vine blossom

Sand Vine seed pods

In the first light of day, striped caterpillars cover it, coursing its twisted stems, cruising the pathway from one tender leaf to the next. Until, sated, they hang as chrysalides—luminous green charms across this heavy milkweed blanket.

Monarch caterpillar feeding on Sand Vine

Their appreciation is boldy stated—
orange wings cover my field.

Monarch nectaring on ironweed

"Have you seen...." is an effort to discover the unusual beauty in things not usually appreciated for their beauty.

Who grows there?

Sand Vine, Cynanchum laeve

I could blame it on the weather.
Heaven knows it’s rained more this summer than ever before, or so it would seem. Weekly storms have left the ground saturated. And cool temperatures have taken little of the moisture away. The tomato plants, lush and leggy, have barely held their fruit for the time it takes to ripen, many times dropping heavy, orange orbs onto the damp dirt to rot, hidden from view in the coiling, bushy branches wrapping within each metal cage.
I could blame it on the woodchucks--all ten, who fed handsomely on dinners seasoned with freshly snipped dill and cilantro, after ducking beneath the electric fence to gorge on green beans and decapitate the tender tops of sweet potato plants each time the roots sent fresh growth out from each hopeful hill.
Or, I could blame it on my life, that teases me into thinking I have time to devote to a garden, remembering the tending and doting one demands--then picks up and runs off laughing, never looking backward over its shoulder to see that I haven’t kept up.
Truth is, all three have come together this year to leave us with mountains of zucchini and cucumbers, a nice plot of basil and little else.

So, determined to rescue the remnants of what had been 2 rows of green beans, now lying mauled and muddied beneath a heavy blanket of vines creeping in from the edge, I set off toward the plot, clippers in hand. Julie had heard that a heavy pruning of the plants could produce a second crop and was giving it a try.
For me, any crop, this year, would be welcome.

Snipping along, nipping and tucking my way down each row, bean stems here, vine stems there, I amassed quite a pile—tangled and thrown onto the grass, the few old, woody beans sadly hanging. And marveled at my new creation—a barren, brown strip. The 2 rows of plants, nothing more than short stems.

Sand Vine, Cynanchum laeve
Do you see what I see?
(click to enlarge)

The vines, always eyeing an open space to conquer, had also found the corner stake, and had wound around and around each other up its metal bar, extending a ropey arm to the sky. From my spot in the grass, where I sat, pleased, now, in my new hope for the ravaged garden, I could see hundreds of tiny golden aphids along its length, each elbowing its neighbor, nodding and dipping as they sipped from the tender stem.
And a teeny, tiny stripy one, that wasn’t an aphid at all.

I knew, even as I rose to look more closely at what was barely there, what moved slowly along the stem.
His fine black and yellow-striped body.
The delicate whiplashes on either end.
Yes, the monarch caterpillars I had hoped to find in the milkweed patch beside the pond, were feeding here, instead, on the Sand Vine--and I had just plowed through their nursery.

Monarch caterpillars feeding on Sand Vine, Cynanchum laeve

Carefully, I unraveled the tangled vines from the pile tossed beside the garden, my eyes scanning for evidence of chewed leaves and tiny striped bodies and found two more, untouched by the trimming, wandering aimlessly amidst the wilting stems.
Gently, I inserted a new leaf beneath the silken attachments of their tiny feet, and in minutes, each inched forward onto their new climbing host plant.
In total, now seven.

No cilantro, no dill, no sweet potatoes, no beans—
but the garden’s just fine, if I might say so.
Some, in fact, say it's divine.

Monarch butterfly depositing egg on Sand Vine, Cynanchum laeve

Afterglow

By dusk, the white blanket has begun to settle in.
From every creek bed, it pours out onto the broad, low pastures to hang, swirling inches above the ground, turning and curling, before piling up in a soft drift and spilling over the ridge into the field beyond.
Quiet and cool, it is left to soothe the spaces this August heat has seared.
In the dark, I’ve walked here with a light—the air thick with katydid and frog song, my hair absorbing the soupy air until it gathers into drops that trickle down my face. Oozing richness and heavy with the frenzy of life on a summer night.


By morning, with the sun on its heels, it quickly rushes off, leaving nothing to hint of its reveling--
except a few broken strands of beads on the finest threads.

(click to enlarge)

Dew on seeds of Wild Lettuce

By mid-morning, the sun had erased all the dew, and its heat and brightness chased all but the hardiest deep into the woods to stay cool.
I was surprised to find this little Spring Peeper still here, though quiet, contentedly sitting on the leaf of a milkweed, shaded by another overhead. He had found the perfect perch from which to watch this summer morning.

High Water Mark

The dry days of summer, this year have not come.
Even now, my path to the pond and beyond remains a winding one—
taking the higher ground, hugging the fence line as it reaches toward the field behind the barn—
never coursing straight across, for the lush green grass of an April day grows there still.
And through the blades, where each step would be quickly consumed, the heat of the day dances in small flashes of light, on inky puddles.

A crack has grown in the center of the gravel drive.
From a small trickle weeks ago, with each deluge, carving a deeper path down our hill, as the waters race toward the small stream roaring across the road. Removing one stone after another, widening the wash. Until a small canyon now welcomes our guests at the road’s edge.

Question Mark Butterfly, Polygonia interrogationis

Ebony jewelwing damselfly, Calopteryx maculata

But the higher waters can carry us , too.
Further back,
deeper than ever before,
into creek beds we’ve never explored.
Beyond the gravel bars that, on most August days, jut from the water—
draw a line you may not cross.

Here, with its only access the water,
a celebration seldom seen—
those flowers of the hidden summer streamside.

American Water Willow, Justicia americana

Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata

Sharpwing Monkey Flower, Mimulus alatus

In a mass of roots on an exposed bank, a 4-foot long Northern Water Snake was well-hidden, too.
It looks as if he's chosen the roughness there to slough off his outgrown skin.
Can you see it beginning to loosen from the top of his head?

Communal Caterpillars

Hey, where’d everybody go?

I stand here waiting excitedly, like the kid who was thrilled to get an invitation to the coolest party ever, only to find it’s a joke.
There’s no one here but me!

The hundreds of Milkweed Tussock Caterpillars that have been feeding off these leaves have gone their separate ways.
In a week's time, from their tiny, almost hairless, black-headed beginning on the underside of a single leaf

they've eaten their way, higher and higher.
One leaf at a time.
Avoiding the veins in order to not be washed away by the milky flow.
Leaving the white skeleton behind.

Yesterday, a party of nearly 300, snuggled together in the space of just one leaf—now all have dispersed.
Their communal life over at the third instar.



They'll continue to feed on their own now--one by one, at other milkweeds.
But for now, it's just me.
This party's over.

Wild child

I recall receiving a greeting card at my high school graduation, with the introduction, "For someone outstanding in their field," only to open it and find a sketch of a small person standing neck deep in grass under a wide sky. How I chuckled.
But, I find myself out, standing in my field, a lot these days--as the summer brings on the next wave of wildlife--the moths and butterflies.


While not too many insects can tolerate the toxic and sticky latex of the milkweed, caterpillars of the Milkweed Tussock moth have made a meal of it. These social eaters move from leaf to leaf as a group, leaving nothing but the skeletonized remains.


In days, they'll begin to resemble these tufted black and orange caterpillars of last summer.





Such a wild child, slipping into the unnoticed life of a drab adult--a silvery brown moth I've never seen.







So many others become more striking.

Common Buckeye

Little Wood-Satyr

Spicebush Swallowtail

Great Spangled Fritillary

Silver-Spotted Skipper

I never realized, years ago, how much truth was hidden behind the humor in that verse.
How, almost every day, it would be there, that my greatest satisfaction would be found.
Out, standing in my field.

Great Spangled Fritillary

Click photos to enlarge

See more Skywatch here.

Hunter

I went out hunting—to my favorite spot.
Where strong, broad leaves allow the wispy grasses to grow tall without falling. And bold sunshine warms the openness. There is always life here—for, in all seasons, it provides much for many.

Soon, the flowers will be covered with bees and butterflies—their heavy heads full of nectar, within flowers too beautiful to be called weeds.
Juicy leaves, the food of caterpillars and baby bugs—spilling milk into hungry mouths.


She has found the perfect spot and hidden herself well. Waiting for another life to be drawn to this place.
A small crab spider, waiting for breakfast.
Wary of me as I pry the leaves apart, she turns to face me fearlessly.
Widely-placed front legs ready, she is this milkweed’s hunter.
I must find my own.

The sage in the field

His silver head is beginning to bow,
the slender figure bending with autumn’s chill.

Weathered, gnarled fingers curl
where strong arms reached toward summer’s sun.

Casting stories aloft on a breeze,
memories to take life, come spring.

Tell me another, and another,
again,
Grandfather.