Wildflowers! Today I got a break from the massively complicated paper I’m writing, and we also had a break in the rain, so I went out to check in with the neighborhood wildflowers. A few years ago, I set myself a project of photographing them every Sunday, so I know just what will be there, but I hadn’t taken a look yet this year.
My main wildflower photography spot is a forested hillside next to Edgewood School, and over the years I’ve seen literally dozens of types of wildflowers there (of course, not all at once). Yet, when I went to photograph “wildflowers,” I found myself struggling to define the term. Obviously I’d photograph the shooting stars, the cat’s ears and hound’s tongue, the native iris, the fawn lilies, and the wild roses, but how about the ox-eye daisies? They’re lovely flowers, but I’m told they’re “naturalized,” that is, they came to Oregon with the Europeans then learned to thrive here. (Yes, I photographed them.)
What about the dandelions? They’re “native” but also “weeds.” (Eventually I photographed them too, for the sake of thoroughness.) How about the periwinkle? I drew the line there – the very healthy patch right at the edge of the forest looked too likely to have escaped from someone’s yard.
In a garden, we have clear categories. There are the things you planted, things you didn’t plant and don’t want (weeds), and things you didn’t plant that you welcome anyway. My grandma called those “volunteers.” I have a few of those in my own yard – two red-cedar trees, natives that sprouted up nicely near the back fence; pretty little cyclamen that inexplicably appear in my lawn every fall; and a walnut tree that popped up beside the driveway ten years ago and has grown large enough to provide nice summer shade.
Back when I was photographing the wildflowers every week, I was thinking of writing an essay about categories of plants as gardened or native or weeds, and relating that to politics, where people could be making a “garden” (colonists deliberately transforming what they find) or “native” (indigenous people making their own choices) or “weeds” (with entire categories of people targeted as undesirable and problematic by virtue of who and where they are, and because they’re a “problem,” the people in power sometimes think it’s okay to focus on how to get rid of them).
These supposed problem people could be natives, like when the American settlers wanted to put farms and ranches on land that was already in use. Poison oak is native to our region, and I have to say, if we could magically banish it without poisoning the environment or paving it over, I’d be in.
Or, the supposedly problem people could be immigrants. Tansy ragwort blooms with clusters of cheerful yellow daisies, but it’s toxic for horses and livestock (and us too, if it contaminates our food supply). Continue reading
Recently I was rewatching one of my favorite BBC mini-series, Cranford, based on the novel of the same name (and several shorter works) by one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gaskell. Her books helped open people’s eyes to the human costs of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, and she’s also known for being good friends with Charlotte Brontë.
And the other is a story. A cute little mouse finds a great big strawberry, but the narrator warns the mouse that a bear who lives in the woods would also like the strawberry. Bears are big and scary! As the narrator goes on and on, the mouse becomes more and more concerned. On one page, we see that the mouse has bound the berry in chains, holding the key to its padlock. On another page, both the mouse and berry are wearing Groucho disguises. Finally, the narrator makes a suggestion. The best way to solve the problem is for the mouse to cut the berry in half and share it. With the bear, I assumed? But no, that’s not suggested at all. With the narrator! And this is done, and having eaten half a humongous berry, the mouse is quite content.
The Meta-Narrator 