All Outdoors
Chloris is having her last hurrah and it is quite a party.
No, Chloris is not a bride-to-be during the busy fall Vineyard wedding season having a bachelorette party in Oak Bluffs. She is the Greek goddess of flowers and while she has given us a showy summer and fall, her reign of blossoms is coming to an abrupt end.
Don’t spare the rod.
While I am not an advocate of corporal punishment, I am an admirer of the plentiful goldenrod blooming all over the Island.
Goldenrod has gotten a pretty bad rap from those who think that they are allergic to it, and from advertisers who try to convince us that we are all allergic to it; but in reality goldenrod deserves credit and not blame. It is in fact windborne ragweed that is responsible for most allergies and not insect-pollinated goldenrod.
John Buchan noted that the charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
I am not charmed, but do have lots of hope because while I have fished, I have yet to catch.
There have been no morning or evening trips to the derby weigh station in Edgartown, and my pin remains resolutely upside-down (indicating my embarrassing fishless status).
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This old truism is making things difficult for the recently discovered native populations of Phragmites, also known as common reed or phrag.
The phrag we all love to hate is an invasive tall grass that is becoming the dominant plant along the upper edges of our salt marshes, growing so thickly that it crowds out any other plants, including cattails, sedges, wild flowers, and woody shrubs.
You have to crawl before you learn to fly if you are a tussock moth.
Don’t have a hairy fit if you find one of these creepy, crawly, furry caterpillars. In the Island world of caterpillars, finding a tussock moth caterpillar should not ruin your day. At least, it isn’t a winter moth caterpillar and won’t be raining insect debris on your head during a jaunt in the woods or in your yard.
It is too much to hope for that my work and my words will be relevant and useful in 300 years. Perhaps it is egotistical to even pose the question, but on the anniversary of a wordsmithing botanist’s birth, I am thinking about persistence.
Not, as often is the case in this column, the persistence (and pestilence) of invasive species (but I digress), rather the longevity of scientific nomenclature and the durability of a classification system.