Two months after writing that I was finally going to read A Sand County Almanac, I have actually begun to do so.
Aldo Leopold writes about the demise of his area’s last compass plant. Perhaps the cutleaf Silphium has seen a resurgence since the book was published in 1949, and that’s why I was able to buy my first two a few years back, but in any case I see I am steward to a special patch of flora and need to keep encouraging it.
I kept an eye on those two plants, which I planted in our field surrounded only by soil and kept relatively weed-free for the first summer or two. I was disappointed in them for those first years — they had big, interesting leaves but nothing like the fireworks burst of their cup-plant cousins.
I think it was the third summer when one of them sent a stalk up over my head that soon was a bouquet of bright yellow flowers, and the other one followed suit the following year. And when I began to see compass leaves growing here and there where I had not planted them, I rejoiced. Yes, I think “rejoiced” is the right word.
I mentioned the emergence of my wildflower garden last week; it was when the compass stalks began to poke above the coneflowers that I realized the wildflower field is really becoming established.
Meanwhile, the hillside under the bedroom window is a mixture of flowers planted by Red and flowers that might be considered “weeds,” and the result is so wild and free that I wonder if I should let it be. As you may have noticed yesterday, some of those uninvited guests are delightful!
