Julie Zickefoose: Late Summer Meadow

Here's how it looked last January. And here it is in August. Oh, what a difference. Summer, can you stay just a month or two longer?

Bill took the kids for a weekend adventure in West Virginia not long ago. I expect he'll tell you about it sometime. I was left with Chet Baker and a little time to myself to think, walk, and paint, commodities that have been in very short supply this peripatetic summer. Chet and I decided to walk our winter route down to a beaver pond. This is a little more daring than it sounds, given that briars have grown over our path and it was hard wading in some spots. Chet especially detests briars; he's very careful of his pop eyes, which are vulnerable to corneal scratches (thank goodness, none to date).

A well jack, just about buried in ironweed. This is a classic southern Ohio sight, and I'm sending it out to Trixie in Alaska. We're rich in oil and gas here, and every 40-acre parcel has its well jack, pumping away or resting silently. We've got one on our meadow, and it gives us free gas to heat our house. Yeahhhhhh. Life is good. Now, if only our lease with the oil company would let us run a car off natural gas...or an air conditioner...hey, it's our gas. There oughta be a workaround. Maybe a Y in the pipe, before the meter? Nah, I didn't just write that.

Blackberries still hung heavy on the vine. These didn't taste as good as they looked, which is probably why the towhees, who were cheeping all along the path, hadn't cleaned them out yet.

I believe this is woodland sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, but I would happily accept a correction. There are a lot of different yellow sunflowery things blooming right now, and I get cornfused.

I believe this to be tall ironweed, Vernonia altissima, but I didn't inspect its tiny bracts, so I'm not sure. Might be New York ironweed, V. noveboracensis. The curse of the Science Chimp--knowing there are many options undreamt, so the Chimp is never sure unless she brings her books along, which isn't an option when she's already lugging binocs, camera and two lenses. The second curse is having to KNOW.

Boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, so called because it was used in a poultice to help knit broken bones. Cool. I hope somebody somewhere is still using it.

This is another Eupatorium, one of the Joe-Pye weeds. Sweet-scented? Eastern, Spotted? I dunno. I'll have to smell it next time I'm out. It is gorgeous, though, about 10 feet high, making a pink mist over the meadow.

Ahh, wild bergamot, Monarda fistulosa. It was buzzing with hummingbirds. And oh, the smell of its leaves when bruised. Note that the leaves you see here belong to black raspberries.

And the pokeweed is setting fruit, ready for the migrating catbirds and thrashers, ready for the bluebirds in October. What a wonderful plant. We've got it all over the yard; the only place I pull it up is in my raised flower beds. If it's on the border, it stays. And the birds thank us for that.

We were drowning in flowers and briars, Chet and I, but we waded through the overgrowth and made it to the beaver pond. We'll share that next.