When Nature Takes Over Your Wildflowersby Lin Ennis"Wow!" The neighborhood women’s walking group stopped abruptly. Word is, nothing can interrupt their moving conversation, traveling, systematically, street by street in this section of a quiet Southwestern town, unaware of being a human alarm for any who dare to sleep past seven. I was standing in the side yard by my wildflower rock garden, checking for new flowers. The Indian Paint Brush was beginning to show red. A coneflower stretched its fattening head upward, still too young to hint at color. The coreopsis clump, full from being planted over a year ago, was putting forth large promising buds after a javelina grazed on the first batch of flowers about three weeks ago. Two purple penstemon sprayed outward, triumphant they’d avoided being nipped in the bud by deer like last spring.
Hemispherical masses of Blackfoot Daises, arranged to break up the patches of hoped-for intense colors in the wildflower garden, emerged as stars in their own right this year—the first bloomers in a wildflower garden not quite two years along its four-year journey to greatness. The lipstick salvia, just outside the 15-inch rock wall was holding its own, though planted too close to spread into the shrub it could be. Yes, all was well as I, coffee cup in hand, did my morning survey of this not-quite-yet glorious thing I built with my own hands, this wildflower rock garden. I’d started with tons of rock and dirt debris from a local building site, planted only nursery-bred native plants and wildflowers in the hard red earth, replaced them as needed, searching for those that could survive the heat, the drought, my amateurish overwatering or positioning in an incompatible amount of sun or shade, not to mention Gambel’s quail, cottontails, collared peccaries and mule deer—all of whom appropriated this rocky bowl of wildflowers as their own personal salad bar. I’d enjoyed the early cheering on of the ladies’ walking group the first season as I wrestled 200-pound rocks into place in hopes the elevation of the wildflower garden would discourage some mammalian predators. While it’s generally true wild animals are not drawn to wildflowers in neighborhood landscaping, walking down a paved street is mighty hungry-making business! And the scent of water in the soil of a well-tended garden can be irresistible. Certainly, a big jump for a javelina, or a small step for a deer is nothing when the imagination is full of promise. So how did my own neighborhood walking group pass me by this late spring morning without so much as a nod for the imminent maturation of my efforts? And what stopped and hushed them not 50 feet farther? FINISH THE STORY - > ~~~~~~~~~~ Lin Ennis is a writer and amateur naturalist living in Sedona,
Arizona. Her love of wildflowers, and indeed all of nature,
is evident in her prolific contribution to several nature-related
websites, including, most notably, www.naturedomainsindex.com. |
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