Three vultures atop a dead tree at the edge of Goose Lake. The water has receded; the surface is crowded again with lilies. Around the edge, a dense colony of Sagittaria latifolia, the potato-like tubers of which, according to Lewis and Clark, were prized by the natives and filled their canoes during their watery harvest. Wapato.
In bloom and attracting bees on the main trail, the fuzzy pink spikes of Rose spiraea.
The blackberries are beginning to ripen.
Arrived in today’s mail, a new volume published by Library of America containing three works by Edward O. Wilson: Biophilia; The Diversity of Life; and Naturalist. From the dust jacket:
“Pull out the flower from its crannied retreat, shake the soil from the roots into your cupped hand. . . . The black earth is alive with a riot of algae, fungi . . . thousands of species of bacteria. The handful may be only a tiny fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic codes of its residents it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of all the planets combined. It is a sample of the living force that runs the earth — and will continue to do so with or without us.”
Bountiful garden,
I agree with your judgment
of that silly fence.
July 12, 2021
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Categories: Everything and Nothing
Tags: Bees, Biophilia, Blackberries, Books, Diaries, Edward O. Wilson, Fences, Goose Lake, Haiku, Journals, Lewis and Clark, Library of America, Lilies, Naturalist, Poems, Poetry, Reading, Rose Spiraea, The Diversity of Life, The Earth, Vultures, Walking, Wapato
William Michaelian 