More Ironweed Festival

 Still meandering down in the ancient cow pasture down Dean's Fork. It's now inhabited not just by 12' tall ironweed, but by a lone Hereford cow who, by her owner's admission, has always eluded capture. He's long since moved the herd to better pastures, the ironweed having taken over this one, but she remains, alone and wandering up and down Dean's Fork, well-fed by pastures and hayfields and watered by the stream, but doubtless lonely. I see her enormous tracks going up and down the road. The first time I found them it was like discovering dinosaur prints. Outsized. A bit scary, until I figured out who'd made them.

I see where the tree fell over her fence, letting her out of the ironweed jungle to wander free. I'm a little haunted by her, and hope I'll run into her someday, if only to offer her some company. I heard her coughing in the woods not long ago; I see huge fresh hoofprints deep in the mud on the road. It'll happen. 

Cow habitat. Really, she's got everything she needs except the society of other cattle. I know how she feels sometimes. That's why I love my friends so, love when they can come visit and hold me close, and share the boundless natural magic I see and feel every day. My friends complete me. 

Chet Baker trots in to bomb a photo of butterflyweed against the black barn. Vastly improves it, he does.

I make a series of studies of ironweed against the black barn. The light is hard and harsh but some of them turn out OK.

Ironweed-to-be.

The arrangements seem planned, they are so beautiful.

I put the camera's eye up to a crack in the black barn's siding, and it sees what I cannot.

I love doing that, spying with my all-seeing iPhone and its little eye. I wonder if the number 38 holds any significance for me. I look for signs everywhere. I see so many.

I find a mutant plant, a sport, not half as vivid as the others, just a delicate lavender. I'm sorry, but it thrills me only by being different; it doesn't hold up to its rosepurple compatriots. There are many pale lavender flowers. 

Not many deep rose-purple ones. 

Ironweed paints the landscape and brings me joy. Even if the farmers would disagree. Someone has to love ironweed. And that would be me, Donna, Tim, Shila and Anne.

Huzzah!!

Hooray!! Ironweed on sky!

Hingeariffic!!

A northern pearly-eye pauses for a moment

and a tiger swallowtail graces award-winning plants from the 2014 Ironweed Festival, Dean's Fork, Washington County, Ohio.

Tableau after tableau. A million postcards from the Ironweed Festival, to you.

Shila, happily dwarfed by the tallest ironweed in the best ironweed year in memory.

 Doesn't she look like something off a Land O' Lakes box?

And so ends the 2014 Ironweed Festival. See you next year!

Psst. Go out and find something to celebrate today!

The Ironweed Festival

Here's a concept. Pick something you love and create an event around it. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Just invite a few friends over to appreciate it.

Late summer. Ironweed bloom. Blue sky time. Whatever.

Call it the Ironweed Festival.

Allis-Chalmers sitting in a field time.

Little black dog crossing a sunspot time.

Ironweed painting the meadow time.

It's hard to photograph, to do it justice. This is an old cow pasture, where the cattle ate everything they liked and left what they didn't. Which turns out to be ironweed. Inedible by cattle, though I've seen deer  clip the leaves off from time to time.

Joe-pye weed was contending for top billing in the wet meadows.

Wingstem wanted placement on the marquee as well. We were happy to oblige. Ironweed-Joe-Pye-Wingstem Festival.

And we were recording it for all we were worth. 

J. Studly Magruder posing for a new photo, King of the Ironweed. Those are binoculars, not some weird medieval codpiece. 

The Black Barn, drowning in a sea of purple. And to the left, my beloved chestnut log cabin, now just a pile of timbers crowned with a roof, courtesy the June 29, 2012 derecho. But oh, the landscape. It remains delicious.

A log end.

What's left of the cabin.

Lobelia syphilitica (Great Blue Lobelia) growing against its old timbers. Once used as a treatment for the clap. Good to know, right? You're welcome.

Shila and Tim, in ironweed.