Ironweed Festival!

The Ironweed Festival is spotty; it's not going on everywhere. That's because ironweed (in southeast Ohio, we have Tall Ironweed) only grows in masses in badly overgrazed pastures. It is distasteful to cattle, so they eat everything around it, and as a result the ironweed takes over, enjoying the fact that its competition has been chewed to the ground. The main Festival Grounds are waay down at the end of Dean's Fork, about 2.5 miles from where I park.

I don't mind the walk at all.

I've made this walk/run more this summer than in any season before. I found three pairs of breeding rose-breasted grosbeaks down here in early June, and I was hooked for the summer. It's been a pure joy to see the vegetation grow up and different flowers come into bloom, to hear the periodical cicada chorus finally silenced, and to welcome the swamp cicadas, with their swelling oscillation, as they take over for shrieking hordes of periodical visitors.  To make a bird list every time I go out; see it swell past 80 species in May and shrink to barely 35 these days; to look forward to the total surprises like blue herons and skunks, snappers and redtails and Hannah the Appaloosa. 

Truth is, I've gotten hooked on it, on the peace it seems I can sometimes find only here. Shila helped me figure out something about running, and why it keeps us sane in an upside-down world. 

If you're caught in turmoil, whether it be from overly demanding work, relationships, indecision, world events, or some nasty combination of all those things, and you can't see your way out of it, go for a run. 

If you think of what's bothering you as a beast that's snapping at you, what makes sense? 

To run away from it. When you run, you send your primitive brain the signal that you're fleeing the beast. You've taken care of the problem. You've gotten away. 

And your brain says, "Oh, good. OK. Whew! Good going! You're going to be fine now."

And at the end of the run, you feel better all over. You could call it an endorphin high, and you'd be right, but I think the feedback loop is something as I've described it. Running makes you feel better. It shuts up your primitive brain, which is always screaming, "Well, DO SOMETHING about this!! Get the hell out of here!"

We all know that sometimes there is no getting out of the particular mess we're in. There's just picking the best way through it, living our lives as well as we can under the circumstances.

I usually fit in four miles a day, 7 or more when I have the chance. It keeps me going.

It's the best. I get out and see all my friends. 

The combination of tiger swallowtail's sweetcorn yellow and tall ironweed's royal purple is a mighty fine one. 

I love to watch them diving deep into the flowers, thorax pumping, head dipping--there's so much butterfly behavior to watch. They aren't just decorations. They are goal-driven, methodical little beasts.

On this cloudy morning, a surprise awaited me at the Ironweed Festival's Main Grounds. 

Oh no. What fresh hell is this? 

It was actually worse than it looked from afar. 

A five-foot deep trench where there had been a culvert. 

It ran clear out into the Main Festival Grounds. Damn, damn, damn it. Why can't they leave Dean's Fork ALONE???

All right then. A  huge new culvert is going in, right by the black barn I love so much. Whyyyyy?  I don't know why an untraveled dirt road needs a yard-wide culvert, but there you go. They've been working on Dean's for several years now. It used to be impassable, with ruts two feet deep, but now I could drive the Subaru top to bottom. There are new culverts going in all over the place in our area. I have a sneaking suspicion this is because they're expecting greatly increased traffic from huge heavy trucks in the near future.  See previous post. It comes down to oil and gas development.

Chet and I pushed around the mess and entered the Festival Grounds. Exhale. Accept what is, move on.

 All is well there. The ironweed is coming on strong and tall. 

 I have to be careful that I don't lose Chetty in the ironweed. It's hard to keep him in sight, and with his deafness, I can't call him anymore. When he loses visual contact with me, he starts zigzagging, head high, searching. It touches my heart. I've got to dash after him and make sure he sees me, or he'll light out for home, thinking I've left him behind. He's gotten much better, isn't so quick to panic and take off now, just as I've gotten better at making sure I stay in his sight.

We have an understanding. We keep an eye on each other now.

From this angle, I couldn't see the culvert dig.

I knew that soon enough the pipes would be in place and the road would be replaced. It would never be as beautiful as it was, but that's change for you. 

Sometimes you have to cling to what remains all the harder.

A female indigo bunting with a nest nearby gave her "SPIT!" call over and over. 

On the way home I looked at leaves that had fallen early. This one looked like a weather map of Florida to me, when a tropical storm is attacking.

The leaves that fall in August have something wrong with them.  Red maples shed a lot, and some disease has the yellow buckeyes dropping all their leaves, which turned red in July. 

Black tupelo. Mmm. They can make a red like no other, even when they're sick.

Another red maple, all blotched and spotted. Fantastic.

I looked up, and Chet Baker was waiting, smiling fondly. You and your leaves.

So, for those who miss the Ironweed Festival, this is how it looks this year. With Whipple's version of The Big Dig going on, perhaps it's best that there not be a full-blown Festival in 2016. Maybe we'll wait until it's all smoothed over. 

Torn up as it is, Dean's still saves me. Please, may it never see pavement.

Bovids, Marvelous Bovids

I've been singing the praises of deer so much lately that I feel a little bad for the other bovids in my life.

This is Bully.

He is a fine, firm, fully-packed Hereford bull. He is a gentle father, an attentive lover, and he has a wonderful harem that includes Spotify, my favorite cow. She's the leftmost cow, with the spotted face.

Bully is very nice and he will walk up to me. He lets me rub his marcelled forehead. Please notice his white-banded ears. They are very spiffy.

The cattle like to gather and watch us ride up on our bicycles.

And they watch us go. Please note the preponderance of ironweed in their heavily grazed pasture, and the utter lack of ironweed to the right of the fence. The grass truly can be greener and tastier over the fence. At least for cows.

I hadn't seen Spotify for months. I looked for her all winter, but kept missing her, so I concluded she'd been sold. She's got the best markings, clownface paint, that spot on her brisket. And her calves do, too.

 Perhaps she was lying in...a new favorite phrase, which describes what new mothers used to do after the arrival of a baby. I didn't get to do a lot of that; they kicked me out of the hospital in under 24 hours with Phoebe, and Liam, too. 

But this spring she showed up with the most marvelous little bull calf. Kinda favors his mama, don't he?

Growing like ironweed, he is. We both love him. Figured you would, too.

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.