Iron Herbs
This Common Pursulane (Portulaca oleracea) has sprouted with vigor at the edge of the yard near the paved alley road. Its relatives are everywhere. It is perhaps the most common plant the world over. Researchers have indentified twenty-six different local names for this species, including Ngaglug in the Philipines, Farfena in Oman, and Verdolaga in the Dominican Republic. It is also used in many places as a traditional medicine, having an unusually high iron content and a complex of biologically active compounds that have proven traditionally effective at treating everything from boils to nauseau. It has been a regular component of salads for peoples everywhere, although, because of its potential toxicity, such uses are no longer encouraged. It grows in stages, dropping down roots alongside its succulent leaf stalks, not always to set, but always just in case. Its red branches and rounded leaves remind one of the Jade tree, long treasured in the East, but the delicate five-petalled flower it produces betrays its true character. The common pursulane's yellow flower opens only to sunlight, it remains folded otherwise. Pliny the Elder gave the sun his highest esteem in his Natural History for its contribution to the essential vitality of life; these ubiquitous plants seem to quietly concur, as well as to provide their own helpful additions. Unless you live in the far north, you have encountered the iron-rich pursulane, you have snapped its stalk and leaves underfoot or pulled its sprouts from your garden or allowed it to flourish at the edge of your driveway. You have unquestionably seen it; I know you have.

Which seems to me to be one of those incidentals that begs the question of truth. We are being exposed to a minute fraction of what might honestly be called 'world events' and being made to fix our attention and our earned value and our integrity on getting those few things right. And we haven't even gotten them right; we have gotten them terribly wrong. Our funds have paid for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Some guilty, too, no doubt, but the vast numbers, innocent. And our polis has made this so; we have caused more than a proverbial mayem. Worse still, for all of the rest of the overlooked, this has been a shameful time, a time of neglect, a time or carelessness in the sense of who could care less? With the answer being a resounding, no one. These are the least caring of times. So, the common pursulane is the sort of natural fact that stands in sharp contrast to the awful manners we have decided to wear at home and carry abroad. Its passing from our common lives is perhaps one of those boundaries from which it is always difficult to return. May it entertain our salads once again.

Powder Puff
I thought this was a Wild Tantan (Desmanthus virgatus), but it turns out to be Sunshine Mimosa (Mimosa strigillosa). Also known as powder puff mimosa. It has been quietly extending its fleshy stem from edge places toward open space within this xeriscape here on the sandy ground of Gulf coast Florida. It grows here like elsewhere in Florida from an abundance of seed stock left by its own past generations. Slowly, unadorned, without fanfare, it creeps, pressing out a compound pinnate leaf of the most intricate and delicate character, and then pressing out another. So unassuming, in fact, that I had barely noticed it except to notice that it grew in every spare corner and had a familiar appearance. It looks very much like the Prairie Mimosa (Desmanthus illinoensis), which is found in the central prairie of the United States and welcome as a highly nutritious grazing plant. But this plant has similar leaves only; it grows in a very different manner creeping along the ground and it explodes a purplish, instead of a white, rounded powderpuff flower. It will leave behind traces of the summer's energy for future residents and future years. This flower shocked me this morning in my daily rounds. It had appeared overnight, a firework explosion of thin petals, a strange purplish presence jumping out at me from the otherwise drab yard. I thought it was a plastic object, at first, and then I thought it had fallen off a plant from the next yard. When I reached to pick it up, I found it connected to the plant where it lay. I noticed then that the mimosa had sprouted multiple pods that would become flowers in the next few days and I realized that the rains that had picked up this week, as against two weeks without rain, had set these patient plants in motion. There is ample sun energy in these parts, whose expression is only hampered by the availability of water.

When does the question of present horror get honestly asked? Murder and death and brutality beyond the scope of our predecessor's best hopes. We are too old for this, as someone should say. We are no longer children. Looking into the face of death produced by 20th century society did not have to be and does not have to become more cycles of the same tired hatreds. We must live more now. More today. More at the ends of our fingers and hands, more within the scope of our visions and range of our ears. We must live life for life and side step the fake ideology of modernist preening and machified communications. These are not idle days of ours, they will be gone one day and our children and our children's children will look back and have the question of where we were. I do not want to be ashamed of the answers they find. May our lives be more and more like the delicate structure produced by this tenacious and delicate ground cover, appealing to the eye (and too the inner eye as well) and exploding, on occassion, with the surprising delight of this flower.

Heart of Heartiness
This cabbage palmetto or cabbage-palm (Sabal palmetto) is the only palm species native to the eastern United States. It's range is from the southern coast of North Carolina south along the coast to Florida, a state it occupies the southern three quarters of. South Carolina and Florida both claim it as their official state tree, although the geography favors Florida. Limited by climate and well suited to soils that would not appeal to more discriminating trees, the cabbage-palm is planted in urban places and has been planted in large numbers along Florida's Interstate Highway system. They are something like the sycamore of the south, streetside and poorly nutrified. The cabbage-palm can tolerate soils from base to acidic, and prefers the sandy neutrality of the Southeastern coast and Florida Peninsula. Drought has no immediate effect on the tree, and it will flourish and grow with vigour under regular water. The leaves or fronds, six or seven feet in length and nearly as wide, erupt directly out of the top of the trunk of the tree - a trunk that never branches. Some of these native palms retain their leaves, the stalk of which is sawed off forming alternating pockets along the length of the trunk, pockets that provide home to several kinds of lichen and fungus as well as other native air-breathing plants. You can see a new frond taking shape directly out of the top of the tree in this picture, it's thick spine developed first, sticking almost five feet straight into the air. If I were to climb this tree and root out that frond, the tender living tissue could be made into a delicious salad. Perhaps you've had one: heart of palm? If you root out the living tissue, however, you take the life of the tree. The practice is discourage and outlawed, although gleeners descend with speed upon every palm fallen by natural causes. Hurricane salads, they might be called. The trunks themsleves are usefully solid and used as wharf pilings and for docks. The fronds can be turned into brushes when they are young and woven into baskets as they mature into leaves. This one builds its leaves in a steady native pace. Happy here amongst the citrus trees and pineapple, beach sunflower and green anoles.

This quiet place is an anomaly, though. Today brings scenes from new corners erupting into bloodshed, a war on nothing against nothing and everything perpetrating itself perfectly along these lines. We started it. Not the underlying tensions, but the unfettered expression of violence. We started that. We sanctioned the state expression of that, modeled it for all the world to see. The rudderless cause-mongering of GWB, at it again today and clearly aiming for the lowest denominator. That our outrage hasn't swelled into something more tangible and politically effective may be the great historical question of our age. Surely the cost has become too much for all of us. Surely it was predictably so from the very outset. Surely we cannot wish this for ourselves. The evils unleashed are furious, it seems, but why do we only work to unleash more? What fevered battle plan gives this route any credence or justifications? Do we retreat from our best efforts forever? Have we fallen that far. This Sunday as I float in the warm salty seas of our southern Gulf I think of cabbage palmettos, hedging their bets by keeping their structure simple and their needs flexible. The seed of their future generations falls confident each year, would that the same for ours.

Southern Aster
This beach sunflower, or cucumberleaf sunflower, (Helianthus debilis) is a native to Florida, and many of its close relatives are natives to sandy and beach zones along the eastern seaboard. This one erupted here of its own accord and from a few small seeds has created almost a bush of delightful yellow flowers. New generations of stalk and leaf growing up atop older generations. There are three clusters around the yard, but the flower is ubiquitous in this xeriscopic landscape. Yards are being nudged back to native conditions, lawns drying up. Not everywhere, mind you, but you can see it. And the beach sunflower is one of its biggest proponents. In a land not known for its colorful native flowers, this plant bucks the trend and flowers throughout the year. Its flowers, when pollenated, produce an oily seed that is a delicious treat for birds and small animals. Yesterday nearby this cluster of sunflower I saw a green anole (the native one), a large one with vertical dominance over the territory of this flower. Native plants, native species. As an Aster, this beach loving-flower is part of the newest family of plants. Sunflowers, leaf lettuce, and that purple aster you remember from the fall roads in New England, are all a part of this flower's broad new family. Mostly leaf and stalk. Colorful radial flowers. They seem to enjoy their fact of living, wherever they are found. They nourish our stomachs and our imaginations. Here in this xeriscopic landscape, this individual plant cluster will find the space to flourish before its time runs out. It will live a life of life, as its smiling face attests.

And yet, death has become a second nature for us. Each day the tallies in the press are too much to bear, a dozen, another, this time hundreds, that time thousands. We cannot escape the burden of this war any longer. We cannot let this madness go on in our names and get woven into the media-fabric that comprises our notion of humanity. We must stop allowing ourselves to be lied to; we must stop lying to ourselves. Revenge only justifies revenge, it never works backwards. It takes a strong arm to be silent, it takes a big man to be gentle, it take real power to be peaceful. We need real power. A simple shift of priorities can lay new foundations quickly. Native thoughts can flow through native undergrowth. Humanity as life, not death, can flourish once again. The green anole claims its sunflower patch with a flaring of its neck. I have no conflict with him. No. I admire his technique.

Grape Feet
These grapefruit (Citrus X paradisi) begin their slow maturing process on the branches of a ten foot tall grapefruit tree planted on this piece of ground some untold years ago. The fruit of this tree are filled with seeds, no one would want to buy such a fruit. But to taste them, so says their current owner, is to know the glandular paradise from which they got their latin name. They are a newcomer to the fruit tree world, a hybrid between the orange tree (Citrus sinesis) and pummelo (Citrus maxima), cultivated in the 19th century and brought to Florida just before the turn of the twentieth. This tree species is a hybrid that counted on human intervention for its range, some might say even its existence. They are one hundred percent sensitive to frost, which significantly limits their northward range (although, one can imagine them giggling with delight at the current warming projections). Grapefruit branches, like all citrus branches, are thorny shoots that slowly fill into the familiar woody tree like branches. They are an evergreen, with hearty crisp dry leaves that seem to survive into the growth of new shoots, and then yellow and fall. Their roots are near the surface and cannot be covered too deeply or the tree will suffocate. They breathe oxygen through their roots and absorb water from the air. This very tree hosts at least two anole territories, it is a constant perch for the mourning doves that gather food from this piece of land, and it already holds several dozen green grapefruit. It marks a place of human habitation and reveals the gentle hand of cultivation and care. It seems untroubled by the passage of time or the heat of the midday sun.

The message is said to be clear in Connecticut. No war. No complicity with war. Can the elections hang on such an idea? These violent scrambles, the justified and unjustified bloodshed and revenge, Pyhrric victory or nothing, goes the logic. Generations of more hatred cast in stone, shattered into memory with each exploding shell and tearing bullet. What point language if intelligence is unwilling to head its logic. Why bother talking if pre-emption now rules the day. Here's the real question: why launch your killing attacks - well-timed, extensively destructive, that is, pre-planned - from a narrative of defensiveness? What holds back your courage to admit your own honest goals? There is something in that; I know that there is. There is a nugget of fear, which is our only leverage; the fact of demos lurks menacingly just beyond the corner of control. The gentle hand of cultivation makes delicious treats such as this Hudson red grapefruit tree; may it also work its magic on stubborn minds and greedy interlopers. A plea for reason and rationality in the months ahead. A plea for the peace that most of us deserve.

Anolis sagrei sagrei
This Cuban anole, a subspecies of the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), is an invasive lizard that has followed development from the Caribbean northward. It favors open and disturbed lands and can inhabit with a density of about one anole per square meter. This means that these skittering miniature dinosaurs are unbiquitous underfoot on the sandy ground of west-central Florida. A step from the raised deck in back onto the Laurel oak (Quercus hemisphaeric) leaf littered ground causes skittering and scurrying in every direction as the sun-bathing invaders jump from my path. They are never stepped upon, they are too quick for that, and they move with a decided determination that does not leave one nervous about their return. The brown anole is a successful invasive. It has nearly replaced the native green anole (Anolis carolinensus), the only anole endemic to the United States, in Florida and southern Georgia. Whether brown or green, these tiny lizards eat insects and other creepy crawly ground dwelling life forms. They side with the colonizers, perhaps not eliminating undesireable creepers, but certainly doing more than their share. They will flare a throat fin to scare you off if you enter their territory, delimited three dimensionally: they have a specific height that is theirs as well as plots of ground. Spring eggs hatch into summer hatchling and winter adults. I walk throught their colony, a stranger, lead-footed. They skitter up the side of the garage and watch me go.

Florida is nothing more than a giant slab of limestone that broke free from the African plate some 350 million years ago and drifted toward the North American plate striking land 25 million years ago. It is the baby lands of this nation, the youngest place to live. Only sand has gathered on top of the limestone basement, silcate and ground up sea life, more limestone in the making. Rains pour through the surface, no soil. Plants must take what they can from the over humid air and the afternoon showers that scattershot puddles across this flat land. Puddles that drain before the count of ten. Another day, the same process all over again. This is a land filled with excess energy, too much sun. But balances are struck within hours of extremes, there is no other option under these conditions. The world, perhaps, has something to learn from the Florida rains, the determined balance of energies, the skittering brown anole, never underfoot.