Last night we went out for Sunset Walk and discovered a rainbow. On one side of the sky was the sunset. On the other, a rainbow among pink clouds. I wanted to take a picture of the rainbow, but I didn’t have my camera. I don’t usually carry one at that time of day, because the lighting is poor. So I ran all the way up the driveway, up the stairs into my office to grab the camera, and back down the stairs. Then I hopped on my bike and sped back down the driveway. I arrived at the road out of breath, but just in time to capture the rainbow before it disappeared.
Earlier this year I spotted a new plant growing near the end of my driveway.
Mystery Flower 6/19/20
Looking at both the flower heads and leaves, I thought this mystery flower was likely to be a clover. Going on that assumption, I searched online for “yellow clover.” The search returned a lot of hits, because there are several varieties of yellow clover, called “hop clovers” or “hop trefoils.” There is also a related plant, black medick, that is said to look similar, so similar that it, too, is sometimes called “hop clover.”
Unsure which plant I had found, I put the pictures of my mystery flower aside. But I kept an eye on that patch of flowers as it continued blooming and, later, started to seed. The most reliable key to distinguishing between hop clover and black medick, I have learned, is the seed heads. The flowers of hop clovers are said to puff up as they mature, coming to resemble hops, which is how they got their name. Then they turn brown, much like white clover flowers do. Black medick develops a distinctive cluster of seeds that turn black as they mature. (This webpage, though specific to Cape May, is a handy guide to some common clovers and clover relatives. It includes pictures of the flowers and the seed heads.)
Now that my mystery plant has gone to seed, it’s time to make the identification.
Mystery Flower Seed Head 8/18/2020
Surprise! My mystery flower is black medick. I’m a little disappointed, because I wanted another clover to add to my list, but I’m also glad to have learned about a new type of plant. Black medick is, like so many of the plants in my yard, considered to be a weed, but as far as weeds go, it’s a good one. As a member of the legume family, its roots host nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and over time it will improve the quality of the soil in which it grows.
Riding my bicycle today, I reached a point at which my heart was hammering and I felt a little nauseous. I told Livia that I had hit my limit. Livia tried to encourage me. She said, “You should push past your limits.” I replied, “At your age you can do that, and it will make you better. At my age, it’ll give you a heart attack.”
Yeah, I know that that wasn’t the most inspirational or cheerful thing to say to a child. And one could debate whether or not it was only prudence that made me stop. But none of that changes the fact that what I said is true. I am getting old, and lately I have been really feeling my age 🙁
Given how many new plants I’ve found in my yard this year, I’m beginning to think that if I wait long enough, every native and naturalized plant will eventually show up here. Not that all of them are the kinds of plant I want growing in my yard, but I appreciate the convenience. The pandemic has been keeping me at home, so it’s really quite nice of the plants to come to me.
Here is one of the latest additions to my yard.
Spotted Spurge My hand behind the plant offers some scale. Those flowers are tiny. Note the dark spot on some (but not all) leaves. I thought the spots looked purplish, but online sources describe them as “red” or “maroon.” Picture taken 8/8/20.
This newbie is spotted spurge. It is among the nastiest of the nasty weeds, or at least that’s the impression I got from Google, where nearly every hit on “spotted spurge” was about how to get rid of the plant. I wouldn’t make any bets on it being the nastiest, though. The competition for that honor is fierce. We’ll have to wait and see how this plant measures up to other plants in my yard over time.
My Audubon wildflower guide didn’t include spotted spurge, which made identification harder. And I wish I’d been more careful when selecting a picture of the plant to use as my example. I focused on the tiny flowers and the apparent hairiness of the leaves and stem. Had I looked more carefully at all of the pictures, I would have noticed that some of the leaves had spots on them. That was a big clue that I overlooked. But it is good to keep in mind for future identification that the leaves don’t always have the spots.
Once I finally identified the plant, I got a strong feeling of deja-vu. I knew I had heard of spurge before. So I let my brain cook it for a bit, and soon I had my answer.
Two answers, actually. I have seen spurge mentioned in two notable places. The first was on my own blog (duh). Earlier this year I found a plant that I identified as a spurge, and I wrote, “I am unfamiliar with this plant, so I will have to do more research.” I never did the research, though, and I forgot all about it. That plant, by the way, was most likely cypress spurge.
The other place in which I’ve seen references to spurge is in books about foraging, where spurge is often mentioned as a poisonous look-alike for purslane. The two plants don’t look that much alike to me, but they do seem to spread along the ground in a similar way, and they apparently favor similar locations, so caution is merited. You can read more about the subject at this foraging website.
After reading about spurges, I recommend that everyone learn to recognize their local varieties. Spurges, it seems, are not friendly plants, and perhaps Google was on to something when it pointed me toward all those weed removal services. According to my Audubon guide, most spurges are poisonous. Some of them, such as cypress spurge, can cause contact dermatitis. Spurge nettle (a.k.a. tread softly) is a spurge that grows in the South. It has stinging hairs on it, like a nettle, and it can cause a bad rash.
But spurges are interesting, too. Some spurges look like cactuses, and some have fantastic names, such as devil’s backbone and Medusa’s head. I would like to know more about them. So, as I said that first time I mentioned spurge on my blog, I will have to do more research.
When I first started counting our days of self-isolation on my blog, it was supposed to be just for lockdown. That is to say, temporary. Lockdown was supposed to solve the problem.
But then the government threw away our chance to get the pandemic under control, so I and my family kept self-isolating, and I kept counting the days. And counting. And counting.
At first the posts were numbered but uncategorized unless they happened to fit into preexisting categories, because I didn’t want to give a category name to a temporary situation. Now we are at Day 156, which is a number more than high enough to dispel any lingering ideas about temporariness. So recently I created a category, called “Pandemic Days,” for my numbered posts, and I’ve been slowly updating the older posts to include it.
We know now that the virus is here to stay. There’s unlikely to ever come a day when the country can declare victory over it. So when will I be able to stop my count?
I started the count on the day after schools closed, so it would make sense to end the count on the day when the kids finally go back to school in person. That would be a sure sign that our lives had returned to normal. I wish I had some idea of when that would be, because it would be our light at the end of the tunnel. I just have to keep believing that it will happen, and soon, because I am so tired of these Pandemic Days.
Let me introduce you to a mystery flower I discovered in July.
I found this flower growing in the yard near the driveway.
It’s a leggy plant, not overall very attractive. The flowers are a lovely shade of purplish blue, but small and limited in number, so they don’t call much attention to themselves. Had I not spent so much time walking in the same area, I probably would have overlooked the plant.
Here’s a closer look at an individual flower.
This plant goes by the name Venus’s looking glass. I bet you could never guess how this unprepossessing plant got such an evocative name. There’s nothing mirrorlike about it. The individual flowers, though they are pretty little five-pointed stars, are hardly the swoonworthy blossoms you’d expect to see on a plant whose name references the Roman goddess of love. The plant also has cleistogamous (small, closed, self-pollinating) flowers on the lower part of the stem. They are neither noticeable nor sexy.
So how did the plant get its name? It’s sort of a case of mistaken identity. This plant is similar in appearance to an Old World plant that goes by the same common name. That plant (Legousia speculum) either has seeds so shiny that they look like mirrors, or it has a long calyx that resembles a mirror handle, or both. The first origin story is what I found on several wildflower websites, and the second one is from Britannica.com. In any event, the name doesn’t fit this New World plant very well, which is disappointing. But, looking on the bright side, at least the name is memorable, so we are unlikely to forget it.
If you thought the coronavirus was bad, watch out for the Cheese Touch*! If you catch it, it will turn you into a social outcast, and the only way to get rid of it is to give it to someone else. The kids gave it to me, and I keep trying to give it back, but they have their fingers crossed, which protects them. So I’m stuck with it. For now. But they can’t keep their fingers crossed forever….
The kids and I often walk at sunset. It’s become sort of a ritual for us. All I have to do is say “Sunset Walk!” and the kids drop whatever they’re doing and put their shoes on to go outside. There are many benefits to walking at that time of the evening, but the obvious one is, of course, the sunset itself. We can’t see it from the house. The trees block it. But every time we get to the end of the driveway, we get to see a slice of it. It’s a little different each time, with colors appearing and disappearing, brightening and dimming, sometimes in unexpected ways, until finally the light fades.
Tonight’s sunset was a real beauty. I took a picture of it on every lap. Here are the best shots.
While cleaning the house last weekend, I put a bookshelf in the hallway. On it are books from various series, including Fablehaven, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, The Lightning Thief and other Rick Riordan series, Artemis Fowl, and the The City of Ember. This is only a temporary setup, but it’s helpful right now in a number of ways. First, it frees up some room on the bookshelves in my office. It also frees up space in Marshall’s closet, where the shelf used to sit, sad and mostly forgotten, holding old children’s books that no one reads anymore. Keeping books in the hallway makes them accessible to everyone, and I hope it will encourage the kids to read all of them. Lastly, the shelf blocks the door behind it, which may seem odd, but it is intentional. We are thinking about eliminating the door, and we need to make sure we can live without it before we get rid of it. Previously we had the door blocked by some boxes, and though this shelf doesn’t look that great, at least it looks better than boxes.
The first day of school has been postponed until September 14 to give the government and school systems more time for planning. We still don’t know if they’ll be offering in-person or distance learning. They’re not going to announce that until August 31. I would like to know sooner, but the delay isn’t a problem for us, so I’m not going to complain about it.
