Dolphin With Rabies

Life on beautiful Cape Cod.

Friday, June 25, 2004

All the world outside your front door

I'll probably never have a truly pretty yard because I'm fascinated by weeds. The other day, I found a nice online herbarium of common Massachusetts weeds.

Who could really hate a buttercup or cinquefoil? Plantain stems bleeding (I've actually tried it on cuts and found it works). And jewelweed, I love jewelweed. It's good for poison ivy rashes and the seed pods explode when you touch them. What's not to love? It grows all over the Old Mill in Brewster and sets seed in August.

I even like pokeweed. There's one growing in my yard and I leave it alone because it's in a thicket and doesn't interfere with anything else. Pokeweed fascinated me as a child and still fascinates me. Look at it, with its dark berries and purple stems and giant leaves, it belongs in the front yard of a storybook witch. If it was difficult to grow, it would be sold in every nursery as an ornamental. It grows up to ten feet tall? Even better. I just can't dislike it.

When I went to visit the pokeweed in my yard and see how it was coming along yesterday, I noticed bindweed. Oh dear. That one has to go, it's much too aggressive. This is the first year I've noticed it, probably spread by some bird. I was concentrating yesterday on keeping the Virginia creeper and the baby oaks down to a dull roar, but the bindweed is next.

While looking for some of these plant pictures, I found a picture of a little oddity that I haven't seen in years, earth star. There's another picture here. It's actually a type of mushroom with a puffball center and an outer shell that opens in a star shape. There used to be a wild patch near where I grew up that had these, and also British soldiers and other little odd fungi that only grow in dry, sandy spots. Now it's been turned into a house lot, blah. I haven't thought of earth stars in years, but now I'd love to see some.