"Wild"flowers, May 10

[neverspent]

In my neighborhood, there used to be four or five square blocks of undisturbed forest remaining among the houses, apartments and businesses that have been built in the past 20 years. It was an area thick with tall, straight oak trees and an understory characteristic of mature forest. A few years ago, one block of the forest was cleared to build a medical clinic, and most recently, last fall another block was knocked down and burned to make way for a new church. (That was particularly heartbreaking. They even bulldozed and leveled a small creek, and I knew for a fact that the area had been habitat for a lot of rabbits and at least one pair of foxes, not to mention the wild mice and birds, turtles, frogs and who knows what else.)

I still walk there because it's quiet, without a lot of traffic, and the other day while I was out in late evening, my eye caught some bright color where there used to be just scrubby dirt and a few grasses. It was wildflowers around the back edges of the clinic.

Someone seeded this mix of flowers deliberately. I can always tell because they contain flowers I never see in self-sowing areas free from recent human interference -- especially poppies. People buy a "wildflower mix" seed packet and it's not made for the particular region or local area where it's being planted. Same with the highway department. Some of their highway beautification flowers are native to the area, some aren't. But they're beautiful, they do well, and they're much better for wildlife than the old mown, flooded and sun-baked ditches. One bit of evidence: yesterday among the wild oat grasses and evening primrose, I spotted at least four gorgeous, happy little green dragonflies, young Eastern Pondhawks, the first I've seen this season.