WILD! THE WILD YELLOW MUSTARD*

(dbl click on photos, pls)

Too tired yesterday, coming from Live Oak, to capture these sights for you, so just before dark tonight I struck out, north on CR 25A. Drove past the small houses, the large houses, the horses, this field of wild yellow mustard

and rows of dried cornstalks in a darkening field. Was I documenting the coming of spring or the end of winter? It all goes so fast.

And I probably drove too fast. Checked my tires when I got back and will check them early tomorrow because I parked on the shoulders of the road; in my experience, that's not a good practice. But how else to get the red samara,

the sun dropping like a fiery pendant into the Florida horizon?

Such an enlivening occupation, photographing sights we drive by and often don't notice. Glad I took the time; it made my day.

*CORRECTION: Even though it is commonly called mustard (probably because it looks like mustard greens gone to seed), this plant is actually WILD RADISH,Raphanus raphanistrum L. (Thank you, Allen Tyree.) See http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fw032

IN THE DITCH

If you were driving between Jasper and Live Oak yesterday afternoon, perhaps you saw a woman in a black and white striped dress lying in the ditch taking pictures; that was me, admiring the Gaillardia pulchella Fougeroux. Coming home I stopped to photograph a lush garden with sunflowers on CR25A.


Reader, I have not served you well; in recent weeks I failed to report on the flowering of spring shrubs, flowers, and fruit trees. Among this spring's wild plants that have already blossomed, dropped their seed, and vanished are sheep's sorrel, toadflax, the wobbly-headed Cinnamon Fern, and the wild blackberries and huckleberries I ate from along my driveway. Along our county roads I spot signs advertising U-PICK blueberry operations. Our Suwannee Valley Blueberry Farm right here in White Springs has a luscious crop of organic berries. "A bumper crop" this year,, says owner Mark Quitero.

I have passed whole fields of dandelions, admired the chartreuse fruits of the Saw Palmetto, Serenoa repens (Bartr.); untangled myself from Catbrier, smilax lavafolia Linnaeus); and passed many tall, white spires of Spanish Bayonet. The purple Spiderwort, Tradescantia ohiensis Rafinesque I first learned in my Alachua backyard has come and gone, along with the white bells of the Dwarf Huckleberry, Gaylussacia dumosa Andrews; also the Anual Phlox, Phlox drummondii (Hooker) which spills its colors like blackberry pie a la mode along roadsides. The Fringe Tree, Chimanthas virginicus Linnaeus on the opposite bank of the river dropped its delicate white handkerchiefs within days of their appearance; here on Lot 22, the Chinaberry has shown its lavendar, and the Mimosa is blooming now, also Swamp Mallow and Passion Flower.

The Gentle Fireworks of Spring

Some Notes:

29 January 2008:

Evening, and robins, wild and fat, clutch the tallest shoots of the huckleberry bushes at river’s edge. They sway and dive. The 75’ space between house and river throbs with robins. These puffy-chested, red-breasted robins clutching the tips of the tall pines are swinging in the wind.

This evening the trees at the river’s edge are a little less naked than when I wrote a few days ago about the samara of the red maple, small bits of pink, thrown like silken flame onto Hwy 41. Now, I carefully work my way down the river bank to see if any have fallen from the Florida Maple at the river’s edge.

Thomas flies past me and runs straight up a tall water oak that leans out over the water. “Careful. Water,” I say, reassured by the thought I’ve never yet seen a cat in the river. I have seen logs, boats, kayaks, inner tubes, canoes, people, fish, otter, snakes, alligators, small turtles, and once a white tailed deer swimming past. Thomas comes down in his own good time and is sprawled here beside me now, in case I need help with the spelling of “cat.”

***
Sunday, 10 February 2008:

This is too much: here I am, having just written about the wonders of cold weather and there’s a bee buzzing the new huckleberry blooms beside the river. It’s 5:00 p.m. and splendid on the deck, light whitening the upper reaches of the west sides of tree trunks, limbs, branches, and twigs all grayed out on the north and east. Close to the ground, the tree trunks are in shadow, the black gum especially dark.

The bee’s buzzing stops and I hear a mewling, maybe the cry of an infant squirrel. The black berries on the smilax move in the wind as the bee drones from one bell-shaped flower to another, blossoms so small that ten could easily fit on my thumbnail. Along the branches of the wild azalea and curling vines of the wisteria, I finger nubs that will unfold into leaves.

Here, trees, bushes, and palmettos all lean toward the river. In strong winds, dead trees fall forward, the cracking of their wood sudden as thunder. Such a tree lies only a little way from where I am sitting. I heard it rip and crash from inside the house during a high wind, perhaps last Tuesday, the night of tornadoes in Tennessee and Mississippi. The broken tree is now a heap of huge splinters, lying on the Suwannee’s bare, white beach. The bee returns, circles my head, slows before my face, considers whether or not I am a flower he can drink from.

The sun’s an inch from falling out of sight behind Suwannee River Water Management woods and only the tip top of the black gum here beside me is lit. My own shadow extends the width of the deck and ten feet beyond, dissolving into the thick piles of coppery straw fallen from longleaf pines. Thomas appears frozen in place; he's my watch cat and alerts me to the presence of fox and deer.

***
13 February 2008:

While folks in other parts of the country are sloshing through horrid (magnificent) winter snowdrifts, in North Florida we are counting the winged samara bearing the seed of the Florida Red Maple ((Acer rubrum) that sprinkles them down by the river in early spring. The two halves of the samara are delicately joined, as fragile as an insect’s wings, and a deep rose. Under the gossamer covering are the maple’s seeds.

Primary colors: Driving today along the road I saw the year’s first blue-lavender blur of toadflax, Linaria canadensis. On the roadsides, whole bushes are curled over with the vines of the Yellow Jessamine (Carolina Jasmine, Gelsemium sempervirens), and the two reds of sheep’s sorrel and the Florida Maple.

At Suwannee Springs near Live Oak, I stood on last year's brown palmetto fronds and prickly sweet gum pods , to photograph the long crack in the wall of an old springhouse built, along with hotels and private cottages, when these springs were a tourist destination (from the Civil War until the 1920s). A branch of Florida Maple hung just in front of the camera, its unopened samara, points of red. The Black-eyed Susan (Rudibeckia hirta), phlox, Horrible Thistle (Cirsium horridulum), and Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) will soon be blooming.

The curly red plant on the sides of the road is called Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) and that may be what the ground-feeding songbirds are eating, also the rabbits and deer. In folk memory, Sheep sorrel represents the language of parental love. Think about that when you pass a whole field of cream-of-tomato red soup. Observe how it spreads.

***