September 2022: When the Common Becomes Miraculous
Up the road, over the next rise, there’s a pasture bordered by a collapsing wire fence, ancient hedge posts every few feet holding up against time. The fence is so old that trees have grown up through it, died and been cut down, while the posts and wire remains, the old stumps hinting at days gone by. I’ve lived out here over ten years and have never seen livestock in that pasture. I don’t know who owns it or cares for it. Maybe it’s too steep to till. It seems a shame no one enjoys it. At the bottom of its rolling pitch, the spine of a brook winds through, its borders feeding a network of towering old trees that create a backdrop to the scene, one that looks fitting for a prairie postcard. Even so, the pasture is unremarkable, one that Doc and I pass several times a week without taking much notice.
Until last week, when I crested the hill and noticed a chaos of purple had exploded over the expanse of the roughly ten acre space. I stopped in my tracks. So much purple! I had no idea what plant had come into its season creating such beauty, so I pulled out my phone to scan it into my plant id app and learned it was a common old plant called Missouri Ironweed. I love learning the names of things. Turns out it’s in the sunflower or aster family and because it’s a little bitter to the taste, deer and other herbivores avoid eating it meaning it can propagate at will.
Lucky me, I happened on it in peak season. So overwhelmed by the spread of purple over the pasture, I stopped to take it in. As I stood there, I noticed something more. The place was overrun by pollinators. Every plant had a winged creature working it and suddenly my delight amplified. There were monarchs and honeybees, bumblebees and wasps, skippers and swallowtails, hummingbirds and hoverflies. The meadow was alive and thrumming with the delight and abundance of nectar that I imagined pooling in the florets that make up the flowerhead layered at the top of each tall stalk.
All summer long, ironweed has been growing green, another shade of green in the never-ending scale of greens that blanket our prairie home landscape. So many shades of green! I recognized ironweed’s unremarkable pre-blossom state and realized it, like so many other common plants in the area, had been growing around me all summer long, I’m used to seeing deep stands of trees covering rolling hills and prairies, the sprawl of corn and bean fields, a blanket of grass covering the ground. But now we’re headed into the time of year when a spectacle is about to begin, and fall brings mature plants into their “go time,” that short season of grandeur when fruit and flower peak. Yes, I know lots of plants have already peaked and gone, each in their own season, but fall takes top billing in my opinion in terms of sheer scale of display. Suddenly, what has been common for months shouts for attention. What was simply a shade of green explodes with personality.
And so it's ironweed’s season to shine in a moment that caught my attention like it caught the attention of an entire colony of pollinators. I stood at the edge of that pasture for a few lingering moments to take it all in. The air was electric with an unbridled choreography of color and abundance and joy, the atmosphere vibrating with it, commonplace in reference books but utterly miraculous to witness in person.
I wanted to stand there until the sun set to marvel at it, but Doc got antsy so we eased on our common way, back to our common home, settling in for our common evening, explosions of purple dancing in my brain.