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Before we get started this week, I just wanted to thank all of you who responded to last week’s newsletter. Knowing how many of you share my sentiments and concerns for our dwindling woodlands and riparian zones and the safety and health of the animals that live in them is both affirming and reassuring. I hope it was able to spark a larger conversation amongst your own communities about how to prevent very preventable natural tragedies in the future.
Happy summer, folks! Blustering in on the back of an unexpected burst of heat, humidity, and storms, the fickle mistress that is the solstice has arrived. With it, the fluorescent blooms of Callirhoe involucrata take the stage along rocky borders, hardy tropical plants like Ensete maurelli and Musa basjoo begin less tentatively unfurling their leaves, and blazing stars (Liatris sp.) shoot for the balmy summer sky, promising tiny purple fireworks in the coming weeks. The rain and cool weather have allowed for a prosperous growing season, with perennials fuller and more lush than ever before, and fruiting shrubs and trees teeming with plentiful harvests for furred and feathered friends. Despite the confident beauty of the early summer and the feel-good vibes that it should instill, it is the aforementioned fauna that I’d like to speak of this week.
Sometimes, our best laid plans not only go to waste, but plummet to hell in a handbasket as we wonder where we went wrong. Over the last four years as I’ve chipped slowly away at my swampy Pennsylvanian yard, incorporating facultative wetland plants into the inundated soil and more lenient selections along the (slightly) drier fence line, I’ve watched with curiosity and occasional chagrin as some things thrive and other things gasp their last pathetic breaths, cursing me for placing them in poorly planned spots.
