Seth's Meadow

A mere two and a half years and a once shrub-covered plot becomes the tapestry of photosynthesis. These broom sedge (Andropogan glomeratus) florescence have come to make a statement, saying something about the tenacity of life and the principles of restoration. This meadow, named after the man who cleared it first, who had the vision, and who left behind a pile of woven branches so that we will always remember, is a tribute to to the beauty of wildness and the power of imagination. That lengthening May day back in 2007, the ignorance of how much we had left to do, and the aching muscles burning from the energy of pepper fiber and sandy earth. They were violent days at first, chopping and cutting and digging and pulling. The fire ants, you remember, taking advantage of the niche we had opened and feasting one too many times on the flesh of our own legs and backs and hands. Then came the swamp flatsedge (Cyperus ligularis) and dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) to populate the newly opened space. Dayflowers (Commelina diffusa) and capeweed (Phyla nodiflora) did their part as well. The broom sedge is a latecomer, but a welcome one. Today in the sparkle of late fall sunshine the season of Florida spring peaked. Everywhere flowers began turning to seed and pollinators rushed to get their work complete before the cooling air would render them sluggish and weak.

We are often discouraged on this blazing heap of sand, numbed by oppressive sunshine and too much history. Two paces of life fill this over-sized village of ours. One has been dominant for some time now. A pace of regimentation, coordination, and efficiency. A pace that squeezes the last dollar out of the last second of every day, hedging bets on tomorrow and arranging an entire human habitat to serve these future needs. It is like the stand of Brazilian Pepper that once dominated this spot, so greedy for sunshine and so quick to adapt to every advantage that the result is a decline of diversity, a monocrop, monotheism, a spot of monopoly, a singular piece of land dedicated to the support of a single species of plant from which we derive few benefits. The problem of pepper as the problem of the large corporation is exactly the same: it is a problem of justice and equity. There is no question of might and ability, but action done against society without consent, as we well know, is just not acceptable.

That other pace of life, the other one you know - the one that stalls you on your way to work to steal another glance at a rising sun, or pulls you from your desk to propel you into places that stimulate your thoughts and stir your mind. That other pace is here, too. And rising, like these broom sedge florescence, to delight the palette of today.

Delicate origins, difficult seed
These are the flowers and early seed pods of the Florida buttonwood tree (Conocarpus erectus), a mangrove shrub native to this region. The eye-shaped leaves and alternating branches of both the traditional variety, of which this is one, and of the silver variety, which differs in tone, color, and texture, gives the overall form of the shrub a tree-like quality, tufts of growth pushing skyward. These plants are a favorite among Florida Friendly advocates, loved for their beauty and ease of care. These particular flowers and seeds will develop through the season and then some time late next fall will suddenly turn brown and begin to be eaten. We are told these seed pods will not germinate in this soil on their own. They are dependent upon an apparently co-evolved bird species through whose gut the seed must pass. Such birds are either few and far between any more or they do not pass the seeds in our vicinity, because I have almost always only seen this tree in places where people have put it already sprouted, present photo included. This does not detract from its beauty or its place, it merely explains its circumstances. Nevertheless, I plant the seeds every week or so in my restoration plot - so far, no takers. Perhaps I should experiment with the passage through my own gut?

It used to be to wail and howl at others, those unscrupulous pirates who robbed us blind almost since the 21st century began. And they have not all gone away. But they no longer have the access to national power that they had under the prior chief (I will not even name him). Now, I think, the battle is ours to lose. They don't want us to get our health care. No one wants to end the wars completely. It isn't a radical agenda in the White House. But it is the sort of inclusive centrism that inspires better days. That means that wailing and howling must now shift to us, to you and me. Not to point fingers, but to reflect. What have you done lately? What have I? Are we like the seed of the buttonwood tree, elegant and then hard. Resistant to our native soils. Dependent upon the consumption of others? These days are ours. We may wallow in our indignation or we may hasten into the change. I choose the latter, and will have the buttonwood seeds with my morning coffee.

Twisting fate
What is better might be the way that a native passion flower vine (Passiflora sumthinorutta) with juicy seeds spreads its generations so quickly. The corkscrew passion vine is what the native plant store called it. It had overtaken the rotting husk of a Brazilian Pepper bush that was zapped with herbicide. The pepper trunks lurk for years after such a treatment. Standing husks of starved fiber. This vine made its way up the long stem and then gathered at the top. It has been growing for more than a year or two, given its size, but only now, this week, I notice its presence. Nature is like that. Hiding things in plain view. Propagating prolifically, crowding the ground before you even know a seed has fallen. The offspring of this plant now pops up all around this area, under palm trees, amidst sprouting dog fennel, under towering oaks. It must be a delicious, or at least tempting, fruit. Under trees implies that birds like it. These fruit are not yet ripe, but I believe they will be before summer arrives. And more of the elegant vine will populate the Hammock.

We must always hope that politics are like that, too. Silent husks of dead or killed material covered quietly in a native vine. The opposite of problems hiding in plain site. It is nice to feel that someone is at the wheel and tellingly shameful how unwillingly the fear mongers depart. Yelling louder and louder as they become increasingly less relevant. These changes have promising futures, we look on them like the corkscrew vines, welcome members of our restoration community.

Palm Hammock Clearing, 4/18

This the work crew from Saturday the 18th of April. We made the green pile of brush you see in the distance and cleared a fairly good sized swath of land. A number of the trees that we cut down were covered in Virginia creeper, which we tried to save. Maxim and Noah helped.

Doik!
This juvenile raccoon had wandered down to the water at the edge of our clearing in the Palm Hammock to get a drink and dig for insects. He or she worked away in the mud for a few couple of minutes before noticing my watchful eye. The wind was against my face, so none of my human scent made it to the water's edge. The animal knew what I was, though, and looked only for this one second when I snapped the shutter, the next second it had dashed off through the sedge back into the safety of the growing forest. There is much wildlife activity at the clearings now. In the area to the west of the pond, coyote scat filled with rabbit hair. On the east side, in the thicket of sedge leaves and dog fennel husks, a family of marsh rabbits have taken root. They nibble on the undergrowth and stay clear of predators, as much as possible. Underneath the dried leaves of last year's swamp flatsedge sprouts of dog fennel and capeweed and ground cherry start their annual parade of growth. Up top, the landscape has opened as the dried stalks of dog fennel fade into dust. The new season is upon us, poking its calyx and tentative primary leaves up into the morning air. Last year's excesses still stand in our presence, too, reminders of the season past and the great potential always lurking.

Historic days in Washington. Big changes for our nation. We still seem, in our media, lodged in older days. We seem to have some difficulty, our media, with ending old habits and so they still give voice to those dying ideas, pretending all along that they did not bring us to this brink. We hear the noise, like last year's husks of dog fennel, still crowding our landscape, but slowly, inexorably fading to dust. Next year's cape weed is underway, the day flower(Commelina diffusa) is blooming next to my recovering oak. Obama has laid a new seedbed as well, cultivating next year's florescence. Time alone will show its health.

Two Airplane Events

It was a cool clear morning, we all remember - we all have been remem-bering for almost eight years. And I am not trying to desecrate or rhapsodize; I do not use these images to sensationalize. 

We followed its path that morning in our many different stations, the small plane became a jet.  The first jet was followed by a second. We stood riveted, what do we do? And in those horrible moments after the explosions we all lost something - the futility of the situation, bigger than life and yet putting so much life at stake. The despair coming from seeing the tragedy and being able to do nothing. And then those gut wrenching moments when one and then the other of the buildings pancaked into the ground leaving a void larger than the space they once filled. We all lost something that day, everyone one of us. Two airplanes taken from their pilots and turned into bombs. Two airplanes flying low across the city; how many New Yorkers gazed up to see one pass that morning or heard the strange buzz of engines too low to the ground and knew that something was amiss somewhere? They froze us in place. Watching. Unbelieving. Being acted upon.

And then, how many New Yorkers stood in place watching again last week as an airplane taken from its pilot, glided silent and low over the streets of New York, and into the Hudson River. As if a coda on the end of a trying and difficult era, in the days before we celebrate Martin Luther King and welcome into office Barack Obama, the most unlikely of Presidential candidates, the water landing of an Airbus in the Hudson River has given us new metaphors and useful tropes.  The airplane, taken from the pilot by the random presence of Canadian geese, inexplicably turned into a boat once it touched down in the river.  Our metaphors have been so dreary since that September day.  Now we have something new, something unmistakably transformative.  Experience and training, quick thinking under fire,

saving lives. We have photographs of people waiting to climb to safety.  Images of tragedy averted, of help arriving.  We have learned of the fear when the knowledge of a crash became clear in the airplane, and the panic that arose when the plane came to a stop.  We learned that people took care of each other.   We have images of perfect strangers holding each other on the slippery edges of wings that are sinking below icy water.  We see boats and companies with no fiduciary interest in this aircraft or these people rushing as fast as they can to the problem.  Let us help out, they said.  It was a moment of great humanity in all senses of the word.  It was the second airplane event, the other shoe falling, a tragic set of circumstances accompanied by a different set of human values, a fundamentally alternate outcome, the dawn of a new era. I know those who found themselves weeping as they watched the passengers get ferried safely to shore, as they read the stories of near death, the shouting in the cabin, the visceral fear as water streamed in around windows, I know they felt the same pent up sorrow that I felt; relief.   The recent past, these last eight years, were made all the more unnerving in contrast to the genuine compassion expressed that day.  

Such moments in their authenticity have a strong residue; in its historic and spatial placement, the saga of the water landing in New York last week concluded a drawn-out period of mourning.  The thing we had lost has returned. We can move again.  And act.

Towering Forest of Fennel

The whole transformational quality of it.  The changes every day and slow metamorphosis over the course of years.  This forest, these evergreen giants.  These are dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium ).  They have grown a full season in the soils that were populated with Brazilian Pepper alone when I began my time here at Eckerd.  They have grown, leafed the fluffy wispy leaves they grow, flowered, and died.  Only the uppermost branches still remain on these plants, the others have dried and turn to dust.  It is dusty these days in the Pam Hammock as thousands of last season's dog fennel turn to dust.  At their base, next seasons stalks begin to poke up through the soil like green slippers or a pool of seedlings.  

Or a grassroots president who seems to be paying attention.