Fall 2025: Shelby Park Ecology Report With Lots Of Photos

First of all, I have to tell you this.

There’s a pumpkin left over from Halloween that has been decomposing on my concrete runaway. It’s amazing to watch the rate of decomposition daily. There are many forces at work, many organisms that are taking advantage of the wonderful bounty of resources that this enormous pumpkin provides. The ants are here in droves, but there are flies, beetles, probably squirrels, who knows what else, working hard to consume this pumpkin.

I was watching the ants feast on it, and the thought struck me that they are inside of the most enormous food house ever. It would be like if my entire house were edible, and I were sitting inside of it and eating it, and hanging out. That’s what they’ve got, with this pumpkin. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

You also need to know that three days ago I ate the first ever vegetable that I have grown myself, which was some of this bok choy. Today I ate the second ever vegetable I grew myself, which was the radish. Neither of these vegetables, none of the bok choy or radish are that impressive. I looked of photos of bok choy plants, and mine look like nothing compared to what I see on the internet. My radishes are not even spherical, they are just semi-thick stems of red. Well, I never watered them, they may not have gotten as much sunlight as they needed, and who knows about the conditions of the soil, but I’ll tell ya what. They sure do taste good.

Decomposing
Ants are having a feast
Bok Choy
Radish
Bok Choy, radish, and weeds
Wild garden
Radish root
First radish!!!!

Wintercreeper

*Showing the size, engulfing the entire tree*

Unfortunately friends, the wintercreeper is everywhere. This is a terrible nightmare. I couldn’t stop myself from photographing so many instances of it. In the gallery below, every photo contains wintercreeper vines. So many trees plagued by these insidious vines. The wintercreeper is out of control, but so are many of the invasives. Bush honeysuckle and privet, you will see. In the below photo, it is so clear what these invasives are doing to the forest. You see that everything else in this photo is brown, has lost its leaves, but not the winter creeper. No, the wintercreeper stays green, as so many of these invasives do, and so right now, they are so obvious. And they really are ruining the nice fall aesthetic that we would otherwise have here.

I took about 20 photos. I could have taken a hundred. These are fine examples. They

*How many invasives can you spot here? Wintercreeper, bush honeysuckle, English ivy all present in this photo*

*This dark green wave in center is all wintercreeper, huge mass*

*Wintercreeper climbing this nice birch tree*

*This tree is totally smothered in wintercreeper*

*Wintercreeper climbing this evergreen tree*

English Ivy

As you may know, Wintercreeper is not the only invasive vine that is causing problems. English ivy is another. Both of these escape cultivation and run loose in the wild, now. I saw plenty of it at Shelby.

Japanese honeysuckle

Another invasive vine, Japanese honeysuckle. I saw one that had fruits. I haven’t seen the fruit yet. Note that this is also totally, stark green, when the native plants are pretty much all losing their leaves, turning colors (except the evergreen trees).

A Nightmare Image

This is a nightmare image, of course. What do we see here? On the 16th of November. A green jungle mess. Why is it green? Why is it choked? Everything in this photo is invasive.

Can you ID the wintercreeper on the trees? On almost every tree trunk there is wintercreeper. On the one all the way to the left, English ivy. Down below, the forest floor is covered, choked with Chinese privet and Bush honeysuckle. And so, in the worst places, in a worst case scenario, this is what the park looks like.

Below is what it’s supposed to look like, right now. (Just pretend the green isn’t there because that’s wintercreeper.) If you see any green, it should be evergreen trees.

*This is what it’s supposed to look like (except the green, imagine that’s not there (invasives))*

Much of the park is in a bad state, and probably thousands of hours of manpower are needed, to deal with it all. The below photo is showing what is a common sight as you walk the trails, which are these groves of bush honeysuckle. There are simply massive groves of bush honeysuckle, hundreds and hundreds of stems, thousands of pounds of biomass.

Bush Honeysuckle / Chinese Privet

*All of this green wall is bush honeysuckle or Chinese privet*

*Green wall of bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet*

Right now, if you walk along the trail here in the above photo, you should be able to see the river from the trail. You would be able to, but you can only get a glimpse of it here and there, because there is a wall of thick invasive mess blocking your view. The space is filled with honeysuckle, privet, and wintercreeper.

*All of this green is Chinese privet and bush honeysuckle*

Below is a photo of the largest privet I saw on my walk today. Must be one of the largest in the park. They can become mid-sized trees.

Privet will soon be dominating a new area of the forest. This part is currently clear, but right now the floor is covered with, entirely covered with young Chinese privets. Hundreds of them. In the below photo you can see. Anything green you see on the ground in this photo, all of those hints of green, all of those are young Chinese privets. All of them.

Northern Red Oak

As I walked the trails, I was looking for things that were not invasive too. Especially right now, it’s a good time to appreciate the trees. The last invasive species pull I did with CD Paddock, she gave us a little of some of the largest and oldest trees in the park, and that has inspired me to look for some impressive trees myself, and appreciate the non-invasive plants even more. Especially, our native trees. So, I was walking along the path and I spied off in the distance, one particularly massive orange tree, as you can see in the photo below. I snapped this as soon as I saw it. And I decided to investigate.

*Trunk discovery (note the bush honeysuckle all around)*

I had to fight my way through a bush honeysuckle grove to get here, but I made it. What a beautiful tree. Internet tells me it is a northern red oak. Amazing tree. Hanging off of it, all the way down to the ground, was one of those huge muscadine vines. Those are so crazy.

*Muscadine vine (the straight, vertical line in the center of photo)*

Other Trees

Mystery Tree

My main purpose for going to the park today, and especially for bringing my camera (all taken with my Moto G phone camera), was actually just to investigate a mystery tree. That’s all I had really intended to do. I had seen it, only one, and it had strange, fern-like leaves. I have been thinking about it, and I want to know what it is. Well, I found the one I had seen before, and then further along my long walk I found ONE more. So they are quite uncommon in the park, but they’re there.

Here is the tree, which is losing its leaves as well. What is this rare mystery tree?

Various Other Scenes

Other sights included massive leaf larger than my hand, the husks and seeds of flowers like tall thistle, coreopsis and whatever else, cattails (I think that’s what they are?), a patch of northern sea oats, and a stag. The stag ran out right in front of me. Not uncommon to see but it was a good looking one, pretty large, and had a solid pair of antlers. That’s the closest I’ve been to one I think. The fen/marsh area is particularly striking right now. Looking very bleak and desolate.

They have cleared the wildflower area. Did they burn it? This must be investigated. It’s completely cleared. They may do that every year, to prevent the trees from taking hold. I would have gone and investigated on this trip but I had done enough. And that can be investigated any time, really. But it’s amazing to see that that field had been so packed and chock full of life, thousands and thousands of coreopsis blooms, birds, bugs, bunnies, and deer, and is now totally leveled, for the season.

Shelby Trip (Oct. 15) – A Lotta Vines

[Note: The photos in the email are compressed and aren’t as sharp. If you want to see the photos in higher quality, read the post on my actual blog site.]

Three days ago now I went to Shelby for my first invasive removal session of the season. We’ve just started up again as the winter approaches. This is prime time for removing these Bush honeysuckles and Chinese privets, as they keep their green leaves and are easy to identify. It’s also not as hot and a lot of growth has died back. I haven’t been in the forest for awhile and with my newfound knowledge, I was able to immediately spy wintercreeper, Japanese honeysuckle, and eventually English ivy on trees and on the ground. Unfortunately, the wintercreeper was everywhere, almost ubiquitously covering the ground, if privet or honeysuckle weren’t taking up the space already. And often, privet and wintercreeper were working together to smother the forest floor.

I used to think, subconsciously really, that there was a clear delineation between “nature” and “human world”. Between nature and civilization, I guess. And that there were places that we would go to, and those were the nature places, and then we would return to the non-nature, the constructed, civilized, human habitat. I think that now I feel much more that we are truly in nature all of the time, whether there is almost no “nature” remaining (in a totally constructed city), or we are in the suburbs, whereever we are. Even in a city, nature is there. Pigeons, insects, plants, growing in cracks and crevices. We are always in nature, whether we really realize it or feel it or not.

I think the flip-side of this is that our “nature” is also not perfectly separate from our civilization, and our activities bleed into these nature spaces as well. The forest at Shelby park once seemed to me to be a bastion of nature haven, a place to get away, unaffected and isolated from the hubbub and artificialness of human society. But, now that I realize it is so covered in plants that we have brought with us, and it is so affected by our behaviors, it is not really a removed place anymore. It is an affected and disturbed habitat.

Our properties are the same. We have a neighborhood, we have our roads, and our downtown, but all of this was built on top of and in an ecosystem, and that ecosystem is still here, albeit heavily affected and disturbed.

I have started foraging. I feel that this is a major evolution, a milestone in my naturalistic journey. The plantain weed is edible, I think I mentioned that, (what the caterpillars were eating), that was sprouting up in my yard and is all over the neighborhood. And not only is it edible, it’s so good for you that it has an article on Healthline (popular internet health site). I was so bored at the climbing gym the other day that I finally picked some and tried it out. There was plenty of plantain weed in the patch of grass outside of the gym, and I plucked it, washed it in the bathroom, and ate it raw. It was pretty good, although some of the leaves were really astringent (bitter and dry). Then, that evening when I got home, I plucked it out of my garden, boiled it up, and ate it that way. It was much better, and almost exactly like eating spinach, with a hint of arugula flavor. Parker had asked if I was going to make a tea, and so that inspired me to also save the water and drink it. That was great too, like a weak green tea.

It was really hitting me then, that I was getting a fresh vegetable, free, harvested myself, and that was growing wildly in my yard. I have a whole patch of it, it all just popped up, and once the caterpillars were done farming it, it’s grown freely and there’s tons of it for me to harvest. For the last four days I’ve gone out there and plucked some, and thrown it in with my pasta. Free veggies, and the only thing I had to do was know that I could eat them. That crucial piece of knowledge.

Walking home yesterday, I noticed some berries on vines hanging over the neighbor’s fence, and they looked like grapes. I went home, searched it up online, and made sure it wasn’t any kind of poisonous lookalike, examined the seeds, and decided that they were grapes, and I ate some. They were sweet and delicious, much like blueberries. Were those wild, or had they planted them? I wonder. They’re just hanging over the fence by the road, intermingled with Chinese privet and other random plants. I wonder what the vine looks like on the other side of the fence. I know we do have wild grapes around here, called Muscadines.

Walnuts and acorns are also falling abundantly right now. On the same walk, I had stopped to pick up some walnuts that were all over the road. There were two older neighbors talking to each other in their driveways across the street, and I heard the one guy say, “Those are walnuts,” to his neighbor (they must have been watching me), and his neighbor said, “Those are walnuts???” Yep, they’re walnuts, and if you know how to prepare them, you can have free local walnuts, to eat and enjoy, bounty of the earth. Walnuts are pricey, too.

I spied many interesting things during our Shelby park volunteer session, and so yesterday I went back and did some photography. Lots of vines, some local wildflowers, and one interesting plant, the snakeroot (Ageratina sp.). One of the volunteers, Will, he pointed out this large patch of white flowering plant, that had popped in an area of the forest that we had cleared previously. Sunlight could now get through, and this snakeroot had taken hold of the space. Cool plant, and apparently killed thousands of settlers when they were getting started here in America, as nobody knew that it was toxic. It has secondary toxicity, where the toxins of the plant saturate the milk and meat of animals. Wikipedia says that Abraham Lincoln’s mom may have died from snakeroot poisoning. When I was reading that, I thought, “I bet the Native Americans knew”, and then the article said that the person who figured out it was toxic learned it from a Native American. So the story goes.

Garden Updates

*Large sprouts in the center are radish sprouts*

Sightings From Oct. 15 Shelby Trip

Goldenrod (Solidago sp.) [TN native]

Frost aster/White heath aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum) [TN native]

*My other frost aster – different species / variety?*

*Frost aster AKA White heath aster at Shelby Park*

Sumpweed???? (Iva annua) [TN native]

Frostweed (Verbesina virginica) [TN native]

Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) [TN native]

Japanese honeysuckle [TN invasive]

Crossvine (Bigonia capreolata) [TN native]

Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) [TN native]

English ivy (Hedera helix) [TN invasive]

Poison ivy? (Toxicodendron) [native]

Muscadine (Grape) Vines

Carolina Snailseed (Cocculus carolinus) [TN native]

Wintercreeper/Fortune’s spindle (Euonymus fortunei) [TN invasive]

*Mostly wintercreeper on the ground, some Carolina snailseed and J. honeysuckle*

*Someone has cut wintercreeper vines off the oak*

*All these branches are the dead wintercreeper branches*

Bush honeysuckle [TN invasive]

*“Chipmunk condo”, pile of destroyed invasive plant debris (mostly bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet)*

Passionflower (Maypop) [TN native]

Wingstem/Yellow ironweed (Verbesina alternifolia)

*Wingstem is also called Yellow Ironweed*

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

Cosmos Are Popping Off [Garden Post]

The cosmos are popping off now. They add an amazing pop of color to the landscape. It’s actually shocking how much pop they add. Right now things are looking generally brown and crispy, a bit dull, and/or just green. These cosmos are breaking through.

The first one was yellow, and all the rest have been a light yellow-orange. I wonder what’s going to happen to all these flowers with the first frost, which is supposed to be around Oct. 15th.

The bees seem to like them more than zinneas. Every time I’ve looked I’ve seen bees at the cosmos. The butterflies like the zinneas but they have a tough time because of the cars. Every time a car drives by the butterflies abandon the flower, and if two or three drive by they seem to give up on the patch altogether. I feel like the flowers are a bit of a trap for them in this way. But if they can get in when there aren’t any cars driving by they can have a nice feast.

I saw this butterfly on the zinnea this morning, I see this one often around here. Maybe a Pipevine swallowtail? Looking at the pictures online, looks likely.

The marigold has a bud that has grown massively in the last two days. It will bloom any day now. I’m ready. Come on!!!!

My zinneas now have powdery mildew. They must just get it no matter what, because it hasn’t been humid here at all. Hasn’t been rainy. Been dry as a bone. I don’t know how you’re supposed to keep this from happening.

This second patch isn’t having as much trouble with the alternaria though.

Apparently this is the Pipevine swallowtail caterpillar. Look at this crazy thing! And apparently their host plants are pipevines (makes sense), or the dutchman’s pipe, which are also wild-looking as heck. I ain’t never seen one’a these.

I spent more time yesterday pulling up Japanese honeysuckle. Cannot believe how entrenched it is. I start pulling, and there’s more, more coming up, more coming up. It’s hiding, it’s sneaky, in the grass, in the dirt. There’s so much Japanese honeysuckle in the yard, buried, wrapped around stuff. Feels like I’ve pulled up 50 pounds of it.

That’s what I got for ya today folks!

New Menace In The Yard (Japanese Honeysuckle)

There is nothing for the soul and spirit like manual labor. Benjamin Franklin observed that in his autobiography, when he was overseeing construction of a fort during the French and Indian War. He noted that on the rainy days when the soldiers couldn’t work, they were miserable and depressed. On the sunny days, where they could do the chopping and the building, they were joyful, singing songs and feelin’ good. And here I am, returning from my arduous labor of ripping up entrenched Japanese Honeysuckle vines out of my yard in the full sun, barehanded, until my hands are blistered and I can’t continue, and boy am I feeling great.

Nothing for the soul and spirit like some good manual labor.

I have discovered a new menace in my yard. It’s Japanese honeysuckle. This menace was on my radar, from doing the invasive species removal at Shelby Park, and now I am getting to know it intimately. Japanese honeysuckle, which is a vine, was on our top list of plants to remove at the park, along with Chinese privet and Bush/Amur honeysuckle.

There are hundreds of plants, at least a hundred plants on my (I say my, I’m renting) small property alone, and I just don’t know all of them. I’m learning about them slowly. Well, there was a sprawling vine in the yard that was flying under the radar because there’s nothing special about it. It’s just green and a vine, cool. But I finally wanted to know what it was, because it seems like it’s about to flower, one strand of it, and it’s snaking all around the frost aster. I decided that it was time to ID it, and know the truth. The frost aster is native, and precious. Time to know if this vine was also native and precious, or not.

Lo and behold, Japanese honeysuckle. A notorious and pervasive invasive, here in the good ol’ USA.

I set to work ripping up this foreign invader at once, yesterday going until I had a blister on my right hand and was forced to stop. I was shocked at how much there really was, snaking all over, along the ground, under and behind, and on top of everything. Today I’ve given it another go and I once again ripped and pulled until my hands are blistered and hurting. (I really should have a pair of gloves.)

The photo below shows you how much I’ve pulled out so far, of this damned Japanese honeysuckle. I would never have guessed that there was so much lurking in the yard like this.

It’s not just in the frost aster, it’s all over in the grass, winding up stalks of grass, and growing staight out and covering the ground.

The very first vine, I carefully untwined it from the stalk of grass it had wrapped around, and followed it to the base. I was surprised that it led all the way to a node of roots in the ground, that led to several more strands of honeysuckle. I think this is what they mean by “runners”, which is a term I’ve heard. That vines put out “runners”. This is extremely annoying, and makes tearing up this honeysuckle a pain in the ass. As you can kind of see in the above photo, these vines are often putting down roots into the ground at repeated intervals, and you have to rip it all up. Some of the roots are quite entrenched, and three times they were so entrenched that I had to go get the shovel. Some of these runners were so thick that it felt like I was pulling up eletrical cables. I would rip it up out of the ground and it would be thick, like a rope in my hand, and show me where the rest of the cable was, and I would follow it to one of the root nodes. There was one, it was the mothernode, that was deep in the center of a large bush of frost aster, I parted the frost aster and got down in there and found that mothernode, and I felt like I was discovering the source of the infection or plague in a post-acopolyptic movie. It was like when there’s a fungus or something that makes people become zombies, and I was finding the main spore producer, or the main brain. I found that huge root node with multiple thick honeysuckle cables running off of it, and I went and grabbed the shovel and obliterated it. I felt good for a moment, hands blistered and hurting, and then I saw that there is still so much more to pull.

Digging up the grass was harder work and was definitely the most annoying work. This is just more than I wanted to do to pull up these vines. It isn’t that bad, but the fact that I have to go and get the shovel is more than I bargained for.

It’s amazing how prevalent these invasive species are. Half of the things in my disturbed roadside habitat yard are infamous invasives. Tree of heaven, common mullein (apparently a truly hated invasive), Chinese privet, Japanese honeysuckle, the oleander aphids… we really are at war.

It’s a lot of work, just figuring out what the hell is what in the yard. I’m still amazed at how many things growing freely in the yard are from halfway across the world. Here is this tree, right outside of my window in the great state of Tennessee, thriving and looking healthy and wonderful, and low and behold, it’s from China. Right next to it is another tree that is doing wonderfully, that I also see all over the neighborhood, and wouldn’t you know it? It’s also from China. In my yard, smothering my frost aster and wrapping all over everything, snaking out across the ground, is a wonderful vine from Japan! And half of the sprouts in my new garden are the seedlings of yet another tree from where? Yes, China. Right over in my neighbor’s yard are two uncultivated wonderful flowers from East Asia and Peru, and in the front of my other neighbor’s yard is a lovely Japanese banana tree. On my short walk to the coffee shop through my neighborhood, I can count about fifteen Crape myrtle trees, which are from India. And the little fuzzy plants popping up? Maybe those are young Black-eyed Susan plants?

Nope. Common mullein from Eurasia (introduced in the 18th century, apparently).

A Historic Day (First Ever Cosmos Bloom)

Here it is y’all. First ever cosmos bloom by the hands of Gardener Steve.

I woke up this morning and checked the garden as usual, although lately, as there haven’t been many developments, I haven’t been as consistent about looking in the garden. Well, this morning, I was overjoyed and delighted to see a huge, bright, yellow new flower in my garden. That is this cosmos, and this is a particularly exciting bloom because it has told me, finally, what I’ve really wanted to know. What we’ve all been wanting to know. Were these generic green, springy plants common ragweed? (Undesirable, although native.) Or were they cosmos?

Google Lens had consistently ID’ed these as common ragweed. And I couldn’t remember where I had planted cosmos seeds, so I couldn’t even know if I had planted cosmos here, and if they had any hope of being cosmos. But I was holding out hope, and I almost pulled them out of the ground, in my rage, thinking they were just useless ragweeds. I held on, just in case, and look. They really were cosmos. I can’t believe it.

I started to really have hope about a week ago, when I was walking to the record store. We (Parker and I) passed a neighbor’s yard that was loaded with cosmos, and I saw the buds at the end of the stalks, the future flowers, and I thought, those look just like the buds on my potential cosmos. That’s a good sign! They look exactly the same! But I wasn’t going to get my hopes up too much. No, I’ve been burned before….

And then, yesterday, finally a bud opened up, and it looked like it was going to be a flower, but it was restrained and drooping a bit. I think because it was fresh, and the heat was intense. I thought maybe the flower wasn’t in good health, but this morning, I stepped out and saw that flash of yellow, glorious beaming flower, perfectly healthy and radiant. Not ragweed!!!! But, cosmos??

It looks so much like Coreopsis or something around that I thought I actually had something else entirely, neither cosmos or ragweed. But the internet helped me to ID the flower, and it said, cosmos. A cosmos sulphureus, looks like, as I had gotten the seeds from a free pack at the local park and so wasn’t sure what they were exactly.

In my poor clay, sandy dry soil that turns into mud the second water touches it, these cosmos have done very well. And I see on the internet, right now, (https://www.gardenia.net/plant/cosmos-sulphureus-cosmic-yellow) “Tolerates poor soil, heat, and humidity.” Yep, that’s my yard, alright.

The zinneas have done well but needed more water. Some of them are still doing well, or at least they haven’t died, as you might be able to see in the back of the photo. And actually, I just got a new zinnea bloom, and it’s a bright, light pink. A really nice color. So, it’s true that these are beginner friendly plants, because I have no idea what I’m doing, I’ve done no soil prep, I have put down no fertilizer, and no mulch, my watering methods are surely subpar—and on the whole these plants, cosmos and zinnea, they’re doing alright. They’re making it.

I want to plant the natives. The frost aster in the back is great, I feel great about having that in the yard, a real native. I see it blooming all over now, out in the wild, in some people’s yards, and at Shelby. There’s some frost aster in the wild fields at Shelby. I feel like to have such a huge patch of it here in the yard. And there are some little bits of it here and there on the sides of the streets, in the border grass and by fences. It’s an interesting flower, so incredibly small, yet the same shape and look of the larger, popular flowers. The “classic” flower look, yet so tiny and dainty. The natives are important, but because these zinneas and cosmos have been so easy to grow, and look nice, I am definitely tempted to just go all in on them and have the entire yard just be zinnea and cosmos, next year.

I planted some smooth-blue aster and a lot of coneflower, purple coneflower and black-eyed susan, and I haven’t seen any of those sprouts come up. I wonder if they will show next spring, and need to germinate over the winter. We’ll see about that. It’s either that or they haven’t taken well to the soil at all. The marigolds, I put down many marigold seeds, and only got two plants. So they haven’t done too well, and the sunflowers did okay, I had 5 plants for 20 seeds that I planted, not great, but then they were repeatedly attacked by the local squirrel mafia. They were assaulted, and it was sad, which makes me not want to try planting them again. If they’re just going to get so brutalized… but some made it through. Actually, I should just plant a ton, and expect many to not make it. But if some do, good. The sunflowers are iconic, and provide so much for the local wildlife.

I see fritillaries and skippers on the zinneas. Some bees, but not many. But the fritillaries really seem to like the zinneas.

Now, I had written about the asiatic dayflower that popped up in the neighbor’s yard, and I read that it bloomed for only a day. It looks like this bloomed for at least two days, and I need to check on it today and see if it’s gone three days. And next to it, the marvel of Peru is blooming now too.

I finally yet one of the neighbors across the street. I was lugging my haul back from Kroger yesterday, and I waved to him, as usual. However this time, he was over near the street, and I could actually talk to him, and so we finally chatted. This neighbor has been friendly and we’ve waved to each other many times, he’s often out with his dog while I’m doing my gardening work, and he recently (several months ago) got a puppy, that was extremely tiny and cute. It’s grown up, and is still extremely tiny. He told me that she’s now full sized, and guess what? Her name is Lucy. I thought that was kind of amazing, seeing as how no one is actually named Lucy except the main character in the story I wrote, Lucy and the Mingmerang, and this little dog was named Lucy, the whole time. Well, maybe the story should be about a dog instead. Dog and alien go on great adventure together. Anyway, the neighbor, Jared, he said that he liked my wildflowers. This is another person of the neighbor who has commented on my garden, and that makes you feel good. Even though it is pretty miserable for a garden, it does at least have flowers.

Jared said, “Do you have a hose, for watering?” And I knew what he was talking about. My neighbor has the hose, we live in a duplex that looks like one house, and the hose is on his side, and I never asked him if I could use it, because I’m lazy, I guess. I should have a long time ago asked him, and he would immediately reply, “Sure, go for it!” Well, I have been making due with broken watering cans and then filling up 5 gallon buckets in the tub, and Jared has seen me doing my labor-intensive watering work, and has probably been wondering for months, “Why doesn’t this guy just use a hose?” I thought that was funny.

We talked about plants, he said that he had to bring some plants in because they’re been being attacked by the squirrel mafia. He said that’s what he calls them, the squirrel vigilante group. That’s a good name for them. They have also attacked my plants, they are rogues, and they are everywhere. It seems like we have thirty squirrels living within like 100m radius of us. We have about five squirrels that live in our small backyard alone. There are a ton of great trees around, in our yards, huge trees with holes and nuts.

I should take a picture of it, but there was something popping up in my garden, that seemed to be a wild lettuce, and was possibly edibile, according to the internet. It was growing rapidly, and I’ve been watching it, and yesterday, when I was investigating the garden, I saw that it had been munched down, clean to the bases of the leaves. The whole thing had been chomped down to the base. Someone had a wonderful salad feast on that thing! Squirrel? I wonder who done it.

Those caterpillars, the common buckeye caterpillars all went away. They must have reached critical mass and have gone off to do their metamorphosing work. It’s funny that they were truly keeping the plantain weed in check, and now that my mowers are gone, the plantain weed is bursting up, out of control. They were really keeping it down. I should look around for the chrysalises, maybe I can find one around. It always made me nervous that they were hanging out in such a high traffic region, both cars and feet around. If they tried to go across the road on their quest for a suitable place to make a chrysalis, they would not have had a good time. I hope they have found good places to go.

*Common buckeye chrysalis (photo from internet)*

Duewell’s Datura

Alright y’all, I got a scoop for you.

First of all, I don’t know how to spell this man’s name, and if it’s wrong, I’m sorry Duewell. I just went for a historic run, possibly my longest run, not sure. It was at least my most difficult run so far, since I’ve been running the last two-ish months, with my leg recovering and allowing me to go farther. It was at least 5.2 miles, maybe 5.5 miles of runnin’, and in the hot afternoon sun, 3 pm, blazing, over hills and along shadeless roads. I had to take some breaks and at one point laid down in the shade of a tree, when I opted to run through a golf course, taking a scenic and adventurous route, that ended up being horrible, and made me feel like I was stranded in the Sahara Desert. I actually had to bask in the single bit of shelter along that desert, and a bird chirped in the tree above me. I called out to it and said, “Help me, bird!” And then I thought, Why should that bird help me? “Help yourself!” I said, and got back up. What a beast. That’s some runner psychology right there. What do I need from that bird? (I think I wanted it to give me some water.) That bird doesn’t need to do a damn thing for me. And I kept battling.

I ended up getting kind of stuck on the golf course, because I couldn’t get to the road easily. There was a huge wooden palisade that prevented me from escaping. I either had to go all the way around it, retracing my steps by like, a mile, in the blazing sun (impossible), or I had to take a gamble and go through some woods and possibly end up in someone’s yard and/or be trapped. I opted for that, and it was a thrilling adventure, stumbling through uncharted territory, wondering if I would end up on someone’s property and get shot. I came out in an empty lot in part of a development complex, I knew exactly where I was. I felt like a deer that had been lost and had no idea where the hell it was, and I probably felt that way too because there actually were several deer in that strip of woods.

Well, the juicy bit I’ve got for you here — but wait, before that, I have to say something more, interesting, psychology here, about donuts and rewards. I had wanted donuts, and I got some, they were on sale, and I said to myself, “If I eat some donuts, I have to go for a run today.” That was my deal — I wanted to run, but not at that exact moment. Well, I had the donuts alright, they made me feel horrible, I fell asleep, and then I did the run because then I really needed it. And that was the deal I had made.

I ran, and the first 2 miles were awful. I felt horrible, and I thought, now this is your punishment, this is my punishment, for eating these shitty, garbage donuts, and I’ll never eat them again — and yet, I went on the run because of the donuts. I may have gone anyway, but I may not have. I was doing that run exactly because I had the donuts. And so, here’s the question: Donuts good? Donuts bad?

We have to say that it was good. But I look at the rest of the donuts on my counter, and I think, You are disgusting. Get away from me. I don’t want any more of you!!!

Taste so good. Make you feel so bad.

Now, on the very end of the run, I was in my neighborhood, so close to sweet relief, and I happened to see a man in snow-white hair out in his yard. (This is the main scoop.)

I’ve seen this man a handful of times, and he happens to have a stately home and garden. I would say that he has one of the most regal gardens in the neighborhood, and recently, I have been especially interested in his moonflowers. He has a large moonflower (Datura) plant in his yard, and moonflowers have been blooming recently. They’re amazing to see. I photographed this man’s just two days ago, in fact, because I wanted to a post of some of all the amazing plants in the neighborhood, so here you go.

I think you can see what I mean about him having a stately garden. Very trim and proper. Looks good, a different flavor from many of the other gardens in the neighborhood. Now, right now you don’t see any flowers — these flowers are shy. They don’t show in the heat, I think. They might only open at morning and night, or just the morning. I should know that by now, but I don’t. I just know that sometimes they’re open, but in the heat of the day, they’re closed, like morning glories. That’s why unfortunately you don’t see the flowers here, but you can still tell that they must be huge. They are enormous.

Now, I have been kind of confused about the name moonflower vs. datura, to tell you the truth, and I’m getting confused again because I’m reading a blog post about it. It seems that the definite correct name for this plant is Datura (the name for the genus), and the common name is moonflower, but that can also refer to another plant that has the common name moonflower, and is totally different. I’m going to keep calling it Datura, then, which is certifiably correct. That’s a cool word, anyway.

It seems that these are the species Datura innoxia, and are native to the Southwestern US, Central and South America. They are part of the Nightshade family (Solanaceae).

We are getting a little derailed, but this is important stuff. And I need to know it — you can know it, if you want. It’s good to know these things, right? Impress your friends with esoteric plant knowledge. (In gardening circles this is probably basic plant knowledge.)

This plant is quickly becoming my favorite plant, I see. I have never had a favorite plant, really. I have never cared that much about plants. But I thought, after coming and learning about Duewell’s Datura, that this might be now my favorite plant, because not only is the plant itself awesome. The caterpillars it attracts are just as awesome.

The SCOOP here, is that I saw this man with snow-white hair outside of his house, tending to his garden, with a watering can, and I thought, I have to talk to him. I have to tell him his Datura is awesome. I didn’t know if I should call it Datura or moonflower, at that time, and I ended up going with moonflower, because that’s what Aubrey, the garderner at Shelby Park called it. I called out to him, “Your moonflowers are awesome!”

He said thanks, and then, oh yes, he wanted to chat. Amazing.

This man gave me the TEA. He gave me the lore. I told him that I had been admiring them, and if they he had grown them from seed, or bought a plant, or if it had just popped up — he said it just showed up one day. He said he had some in the back, implying they could have come from there. That’s an amazing thing, first of all, that this amazing plant that has become a staple in his homefront garden display, simply appeared by itself. But we must remember that this man (possibly his partner as well, if they were involved) had the knowledge and intelligence to identify it as something good (well, desirable at least), and not pull it, and tend to it. I wonder if he knew beforehand what it was, or just let it go and then liked it. I would guess he knew because he had some in the back.

He said that he had to pull some this year, because it was doing so well and spreading. That’s how it goes with these plants, I read. Some of them do TOO well, and start taking over your garden. That’s not a bad problem to have though. Pulling is much easier than growing, it seems to me (I’m still a novice). Let’s look again at his marvelous Datura that has planted itself and now become an amazing feature in his landscape.

God, if only it was flowering in this photo!!!!! I can see how it could be getting a little out of hand. Well, Duewell told me that this plant that is thriving now, he said that he thought it would die last winter, it went all the way down to a single tiny nub (he showed me the size of the plant with his hand, nothing but his fist). He thought it was a goner. But no, it powered through, it’s made it. It’s been here for about three or four years, he said. And then he told me, as I said I had been gardening for just a few months, “If you want any, come back in the spring and I’ll give you some.”

When he said that, I just thought, Do all plant people just give their plants away? Do they all just hook each other up? Because basically, literally every time I have ever asked anyone about a plant that I’ve been interested in, they’ve hooked me up. They’ve literally given me the seeds, given me a chunk of the plant, or offered to give me the seeds/chunk of plant. How incredible is that? I got mountain mint from the gardener at Shelby, Patrick the neighbor offered to give me more, the gardener at Bates hooked me up with passionflower pods, and Deuwell says he would give me Datura seeds. All of this umprompted and unasked for. What an amazing culture! Gardeners are “real people.”

After discussing the Datura, our conversation turned to the neighborhood. I told him I was just down the street, he asked me about construction on a nearby house (it took me a minute to figure out which house he was talking about because there are so many houses under construction in the neighborhood, like 7 within a 100 meter radius) and then he told me about the house just next to his that had been torn down. I had mentioned that they were turning the house near mine into a duplex, “or maybe a mansion”, and he said that’s what they were doing with the house right next to his. They were building a mansion, a 2 million dollar home. Wowie. He said that the previous resident had lived there their entire life, and finally had to go to a nursing home at 92. Now, the home goes down (and it was not a mansion), and a new one is built.

We talked about the amazing growth of the neighborhood, the construction, rising home prices, people coming here from all over, he said “California”, and I asked how long he’d been in his home. He said it was a friend’s house really, and he was just staying there — his house had flooded in 2010. He told me about his experience in this historic flooding, which I had heard about from working at Gibson. (Several guests had asked me about how the flooding had affected Gibson, because apparently they had a warehouse or headquarters that were severely affected.) Duewell told me about his home in Belleview being underwater, he said the water in his house was 6 feet high. 6 FEET. Can’t even believe it.

I had heard the tales of the great Nashville flood, and I heard the tales again. You hear these tales, of great natural disasters, and talking with him about it made me think about my grandpa telling me about the Palm Sunday tornado in Indiana. Long time ago now, the youngsters don’t know about it. But he told me all about the Palm Sunday tornado. This man told me about the great Nashville flood of 2010, and many of the Kumamotoans told me about the Kumamoto earthquakes, of 2016 I think it was. And while I was there (2021 or 2022 was the year, only five or six years later, poor Kumamoto 😢), there was a great flood that destroyed a huge bridge and did heavy damage to the region. I saw that damage personally — that’s a disaster that I can actually report about.

Duewell mentioning the Nashville flood of 2010 made me think about the value of older people, their history and lore, and how they can remind us of and remember these significant events that don’t happen so often, but they do come around. They can tell you, “Hey, might want to be careful by the river, ‘cause that thang can flood. I seen it with my own eyes.” (Don’t know why I have my hypothetical older person talking like this.)

It was wonderful that my epic run (with some degree of suffering involved) ended with a lovely neighborhood chat about Datura, and beyond. I feel again that I am tapping into an entirely new world through gardening, a world that has existed and is known to many people, has been all around, and yet flown under my radar for so long.

Suddenly, I look around and I see these amazing gardens, I see Duewell’s Datura, and I think about how much knowledge, time, energy and work has been invested to make that happen. The skill, patience, ambition, vision that someone or maybe a couple, a family has invested to cultivate and arrange such a wonderful thing. It cannot happen overnight. You have to have an appreciation for that. And the fact that they desire to do it at all — it says something about the residents. You must feel that there’s a good person living in that house, a wholesome person. The chances are high.

And then… there’s my garden… yikes.

Steven’s Gardening Blog (100% garden-related post)

I almost feel like at this point I should have a dedicated blog to gardening. Seeing as half the posts contain at least some garden updates. It makes sense. Will I do it?????

I woke up this morning and performed what has become my morning routine. Checking up on the garden. I was thinking about some things last night — one thing I had noticed was that my zinnia leaves had really started to turn purple. There was something that seemed to be spreading on them. At first I thought it was because of the drought, but then as I noticed it on some of the healthier plants, you start to wonder if it isn’t a disease or perhaps a nutrient deficency. I’ll show you some photos.

You can see what I’m talking about — this purple, reddish brown that appears at the bases of the leaves. Even some of the healthier zinnias are starting to get it. In the last photo you can see this one is covered with it, and this poor zinnia is going downhill real quick. It has only days left, I’m sure.

Well, what is the cause of this mysterious purple/red coloration? That’s what we want to know.

I went on the trusty internet and did some researching, and my guess is that this is caused by a fungus called alternaria.

Wikipedia says: “They are ubiquitous in the environment and are a natural part of funga almost everywhere. They are normal agents of decay and decomposition.”

They are a “major plant pathogen.”

Seems about right. People of Facebook were commenting on similar posts that it was alternaria, and the chances seem high. I am probably then supposed to pull the diseased plants, no? To stop the spread? I wonder.

My other patch of zinnias is alright, so far. I don’t want them to become infected. But I wonder if it only happens when the plants are stressed and vulnerable, as they certainly have been. I now say with 100% certainty that my zinnias just needed more water, way more water, and mulch on the soil to help retain the moisture, as my wise mother has suggested several times.

Now, if you ever wanted to see photos of caterpillar poop, viola. Here you are. The wooly bear (fuzzy white caterpillar) that’s been munching on this zinnia is still hanging out here. He has been feasting, and the proof is right here in the poop. I should have snapped a photo of the actual caterpillar. I’m not a great photojournalist. I was so amazed by the poop.

The caterpillar has grown rapidly, as they do. It’s amazing to see it. This morning he (or she) was kind of hanging over, seeming to be asleep. I just want it to stick around so we can see its progress. That other big ‘un, the giant common buckeye caterpillar that was eating the grass in my garden, I don’t know what happened to it. It’s gone. There are three new ones that are here munching away, already they’ve again quadrupled in size. Tomorrow they should be huge.

This has been popping up all over, and it looks like it’s some kind of speedwell. Google said mine was probably some invasive speedwell from Eurasia. Wonderful. I should probably pull it, then. Does this count as mulch? Can I leave it down just to protect my soil from drying out? Until it gets out of control, I don’t see why not.

Tree of heaven sprouts are everywhere. Every day they pop up. Here’s a new one. They are thriving in my crappy soil, disturbed roadside habitat. They’re loving it. Too bad they’re UNDESIREABLE.

When I was digging up the lawn, I kept this plant, mostly as an experiment. I had dug up the entire thing and it was kind of smelling nice, and I thought, I’ll just throw it in a pot and see what happens. Why not? So I did, and that was about two weeks ago. As you can see, it’s fine.

This is a three-seeded mercury, I learned this morning. It’s everywhere. Popping up in my garden, and on my walk to the cafe this morning, I saw it all along the roadside, in the grass. It’s a native herb, a spurge. What a great word.

Apparently it is loved by flea beetles, and all three-seeded mercury has tiny holes in it, as mine does, which are caused by the flea beetles.

Kawaii, flea beetle!!!!!

Invisible Strings / Garden Update (Sept. 10th)

Invisible Strings

I am being pulled by invisible strings. I am a puppet, currently under the control of one who is wise and is guiding me towards success and fulfillment. I am being guided by the perfect being.

My thoughts are my own, but my actions are no longer mine. They are those of a higher intelligence, one who is not ruled by my emotions, my passions, my fear or my imagination. It is one who is outside of myself, and who knows what must be done, and wastes no time in doing so. One who knows what is best for me.

I may not always want to do what I am made to do, but it is not me pulling the strings. It is one who knows better.

This is what I am imagining today.

Japanese Is Fashionable

The tall guy on the Ugly Mugs team was wearing another cool band shirt today, and it had just a little bit of Japanese on the front. The band was called Dayseeker, and it said on the corner of the shirt, in tiny font, 暗い太陽. Dark sun. I asked him about it, and then I read the Japanese off the shirt, and he was impressed. He said, “So, you speak the kanji?” and told me I needed to speak to another guy on the team who was learning Japanese.

I had read Japanese off another Ugly Mugs guy’s shirt too, his Japanese racing shirt. It had katakana that said, ドリフットキング. Drift King. Swag as hell.

Japanese is everywhere. Japanese is fashionable.

Just Get Started

I have a reservation to doing my work, sometimes. To doing the thing that I know I should do, that I even want to do. Today, that is write a cover letter and adapt my resume to a job I want to apply for. Well, I’ve already done it. I’m just waiting a bit, to let it settle and then double-check, before I send it off.

A lesson that has been coming up in my life recently, and again this morning, is this:

You just have to get the ball rolling.

This is not any new epiphany, because there already many quotes about this, that say, “Starting is the hardest part” or “the first step is as big as all the rest of the steps combined”. “There are really just two steps, the first step and then all the others.” I know that’s actually a quote somewhere out there.

It’s amazing how much resistance I have to doing things, and 90% of the time, all I have to do is just start, and then I’m having a great time. You’re engrossed in the work, then you finish your task, and feel satisfied and awesome. Conversely, until you do the work that you’ve set out for yourself, you will feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction. You may say, “Why do I feel weird?” But deep down inside, you know why. There’s something you have to do, and you haven’t done it yet.

I have been reminded of this lesson recently with my writing, and this morning with the cover letter/resume writing. Even today, I had resistence. But I knew the thing to do—just go to the cafe, get the coffee, sit down and start.

That’s why starting in the morning is so helpful for me. You have the energy, you have the full day ahead, and you are encouraged to just get right down to business, and get it over with. Then you can have your freedom and fun time.

I’m thinking of the other quote which might be by Mark Twain, possibly Thomas Edison, or who knows, which is the one about eating three frogs in the morning. “I try to eat three frogs every morning.” Something like that. The idea being to “eat a frog” right when you wake up, because it’s going to be the hardest part of your day.

Garden Updates (Sept. 10th)

My soil is not great. I have had some things suffer due to drought, and probably some seeds not sprouting because the soil is too hard or not the right quality. Birds and squirrels may have also eaten the seeds, as many of them I just sprinkled on the top of the soil. It’s a tough patch of earth I’m working with, but things are growing.

The big mystery I have now is why my second patch of zinnias are doing so much better than the first. The first was planted about two weeks before, maybe only one week before. I should have written this stuff all down. They’ve been alive for one or two more weeks in drought conditions, as August was hot and sunny every single day. It rained twice, and not for much. I don’t really know why my second patch is doing so much better. Maybe it is that they just weren’t exposed to so much sun and drought. Even a few days, an extra week of that could matter a lot. I don’t know.

I tried really hard to save these zinnias as they were going downhill, but I’m still a novice. I didn’t know if they needed more water, less water, or if they just were going to die anyways. Maybe they need fertilizer because of the sandy, clay soil. Who knows, but they were growing well and fine, so I think they probably just got cooked, and probably didn’t get enough water. That’s my guess.

You can see they’re brown and crispy. Many are dying, half already dead.

This is the second patch, doing a lot better.

Here’s a marigold. I put down a lot of seeds, two have made it. Not great odds, but hey. Two made it. I thought I had more, but as they started to pop up in places were there should have been no marigold seeds, and they were rapidly expanding outwards, instead of up, I had the suspicious feeling that they were not marigolds. Well, they weren’t. They were tree of heaven, thriving in my disturbed, roadside habitat with crappy soil.

Not a great photo but this is one of the butterfly milkweed sprouts I’ve got, with those little yellow milkweed aphids feasting on it. I’m just letting nature take its course, here. So far it seems that the sprouts can handle it.

Here is an undesirable in my garden (actually several). You can see a little tree of heaven sprout to the right of the larger undesirable plant. The grass at the bottom is undesirable. I can’t remember what this green round mass is called but it’s undesirable. I know that.

I used my Moto G smartphone to help me ID these sprouts when trying to use words with Google wasn’t working for me. Sharing the photos with Google and having it ID things is extremely helpful. It told me right away what I was working with, here. And there were many disappointments, because none of it was anything I really wanted.

Here are some undesirables that I thought were cosmos. They look similar, but they kept popping up and I thought, now wait a minute, there’s no way the cosmos are doing this well in my garden. And there’s more seedlings than actual seeds I planted.

Not cosmos. Common ragweed. At least it’s not an invasive. I should pull it up but I guess I want to see what happens. I’m also still holding out on a fantasy that they really might be cosmos, and they will all become beautiful flowers.

It’s inhabiting the carrot patch but I don’t feel like those carrot seeds are sprouting… at all. Not having a lot of faith in the carrots, here.

This is mountain mint, I got from Shelby. They dug me up a chunk and let me take it home. It’s not doing too well, I don’t think. The leaves are turning brown, almost all of them have gone brown and seemed to die. There are a few green ones left. I hope it doesn’t actually die because I was really excited about this plant. Maybe it’s just going dormant for the season…? (Hopeful optimism.)

I think right behind it in this photo is an advanced tree of heaven plant, I’m almost positive. In the background, to the left. Do you see that thing? Probably gonna have to pull that.

This is something new that’s been popping up that is also an undesirable. There’s a big one that I should have photographed. My smartphone IDed this as “three-seeded mercury” which is an amazing name and hard to remember. Just now I thought it was called “three-headed copper” because I couldn’t remember. Apparently it is a member of the “Spurge” family, which is a pretty incredible word. “Acalypha rhomboidea is a plant in the spurge family…” (Says Wikipedia.)

You know, it looks like the spurge is just in the top right of this photo, actually. I think the rest of this stuff is something else.

Here is the three-seeded mercury, the spurge, to the right. There’s a few of them. And that largest plant on the left is apparently “common mullein”, and is invasive and hated, I have read. From Europe and seems to be a menace. There is another, smaller common mullein in the bottom left corner of this photo.

I’ve got this grass popping up all over in a section of the garden, and I don’t know exactly what it is. These caterpillars (maybe common buckeye, Junonia coenia) like it though, as I had photographed the big one the other day (and I don’t know where that one went off to), but yesterday I spotted an extremely tiny one on a blade of this grass, and today there are three, munching away now. They’re like little lawn mowers. I’ll leave the grass for them. They could get real big real fast, here. Hopefully they stick around.

And the last photo and update—I spied this fuzzy caterpillar this morning on one of my zinnias. I haven’t seen any caterpillar on a zinnia before. This is a new one. And it’s actually eating it. Go for it, man. That zinnia is probably gonna die anyway. I want to see you get BIG.

俺の草、このやつは食べってるじゃん！

This guy (or gal) has been chompin’ on my grass. I think it’s grass, I really don’t know what it is (if you know please tell me). It seems to be some kind of grass, at the very least it seems to not be the milkweed (see below) which is now covered with yellow aphids. Even though it is not even yet like two inches tall.

Internet says we have a Common Buckeye caterpillar here. It will become this Pokemon.

There are plants—the bugs will come!

The story with this caterpillar is that, about three days, I was stooped down to look at these sprouts in this area of my garden, trying to figure out what was what. I had planted butterfly milkweed here, which is what those yellow aphids are on.

I happened to spy an extremely tiny caterpillar on the length of a tiny blade of grass. It was certainly the above caterpillar.

Well, yesterday I didn’t see it at all.

But TODAY, as you can see, I saw it, and it was MASSIVE. I also noticed, before seeing this caterpillar, that the grass seemed to have considerably lessened. I said, “Hey, where’d all that grass go?”

This is where the grass is growing. This caterpillar has about hextupled in size since I saw it literally four days ago, a teeny-weeny greenie baby.

Yellow aphids already assaulting my butterfly milkweed sprouts

I also noticed yesterday, one of my three remaining sunflowers that was again horribly decimated by some predator, squirrel, rabbit, who knows… it was sprouting knew leaves and attempting to make a recovery. That was good. Well, last night I was out there, and I saw no more leaves, I looked closely, and what do I see? Little son of a b**** going hammer on the remaining shreds of those fresh leaves, that it’s devoured all of. Rascal!!

However, I am too soft. I did nothing. The poor thing is having a bountiful feast. It is what it is.

My other sunflower has survived two assaults and massive predation by a variety of insects, and is going to bloom. Look.

Through drought, chomping, aphids and lace bug… We are getting a flower.

If you have never seen a lace bug (Tingidae), here it is. I remember the first time I saw one of these, extremely tiny and wonderful bugs. It was our very first class walk that we went on in my Entomology class, to go investigate the school garden and find bugs, and we were walking under a tree, and he casually flipped over a leaf and said, “Here, look.” And showed us the lace bugs. They completely blew my mind.

They are extremely small, as you can see. And they are feeding on my sunflowers, and I won’t stop them. The sunflower can handle it. More will probably just come anyway.

I will say that my sunflowers have had a somewhat terrifying amount of aphids, large aphids on them. I was hoping, praying that a hero would appear. Well, I saw, today…

Ladybug here to save my sunflower from aphids

Is this our hero? Looks like a hero to me. (A ladybug.)

Below is an aphid prowling on my sunflower. Interestingly, a winged aphid. I think that is somewhat unusual, I don’t always see them with wings. Maybe just a full adult?

Then, here are my Zinnias. They’ve made it but are suffering from drought conditions, even with my watering. IDK what the deal is really. It’s only rained twice this August and been blue sky and hot every day. They get full sun, and the soil is clay. Probably tough conditions for them, I don’t know if I haven’t watered enough or my methods aren’t good enough or there’s nothing I can really do about it. But some are making it through. The patch with the white Zinnia is looking better. Who knows. A lot of the Zinnias have made it all the way to having a flower that’s about to bloom, and in the last week they’ve just gotten worse and worse and they’re dying right at this point. That’s sad to see. I’ve watered them, but maybe not enough. IDK. Ah well. But I got some blooms, that’s alright. We’re supposed to get some rain in the next few days, I’m praying. 🙏

Shelby Park Ecology/Botanical Report [Aug. 19th, 2025]

Alright y’all. You are in for a treat.

I busted out the old cameraroo for this one.

First of all, before we dive into this, I have to say — I had just written about my Japanese suit, and how proud I was that it was not made with synthetic materials, and oh my god. Are you ready for the great irony? How is life so perfect, like this?

I came home from this lengthy Shelby Park reconaissance, field-reporting photography mission, drenched in sweat. I had worn those wool pants to the part, belt and Dr. Martins. Those nice suit pants, although I wasn’t so stupid or insane to wear the jacket. Yes, in the sweltering, midday heat in the middle of August, I wore my nice suit pants to the park, for a photography mission. The park was as dead as it could ever be. I saw about ten humans in the two hour span that I was there, record lows. Most people were not willing to suffer that heat. Only the die-hards were out.

It was extremely gorgeous–ah, but I have to tell you the great irony. I came home then, eager to strip it all off, and now I felt like I had really earned the right to take off my suit, and I threw the pants down on the bed, when I noticed something. Sticking out of the back pocket was a white piece of paper.

I wondered if I put something that pocket, but it was just the tag of the pants. As I then had it in my hands, I thought I may as well read what was written on it, and see those wonderful words, 日本製, 毛, 100% (100% wool). I saw those words, yes, but then I also spied some words, directly below that. Some horrifying words.

Yes people. I kid you not.

ポリエスタ.

Polyester.

I’m telling you, the irony is unreal.

The 表地 (omoteji) of the pants were 100% wool, yes. But the 裏地 (uraji)? The lining?

100% polyester.

Unbelievable.

And shameful.

I have been going to Shelby Park frequently, as usual. Shelby Park is an incredible, wonderful resource for us East Nashvillians. And I have been studying it, and I have been studying the plants, more and more of late. Especially the wildflowers and the meadow. I have wanted to do some photography of it and write a bit about things for you, and I needed something to do today, and so I decided to just go for it. It turned into something of a tour and study of Shelby Park, a Shelby Park report, along with some new botanical discoveries… I’m just going to write it all up for you. I really enjoyed having the camera again, and doing photography. I realize that I miss that, but it also is a whole ordeal. It’s a serious undertaking, a photography trip. I decided in advance that I was not going to adjust or alter any of the photos at all, and would simply try and get the camera settings as correct as possible, get the framing right, and use whatever was usable. There are still some decently artistic shots in here. That was to save myself time, because the photo editing can take a really long time.

Let’s begin. The very reason I wanted to go to the park was to photograph this plant, which is now the main bloomer in the park. It’s Vernonia fasciculata, called prairie ironweed, a native wildflower. Ironweed has kept growing, and they are the tallest wildflowers at Shelby, and they are everywhere.

The really interesting thing here, and that I’ve learned studying the wildflowers, is that they stagger their blooming periods. The meadow at Shelby Park was completely covered in Common Milkweed’s blooming. They had their heyday, for about a month or two, and it has now totally passed. Not a single Common Milkweed blooms anymore. Now, in the middle of August, it’s the time of ironweed. The ironweed is reigning supreme. It was interesting to see it first popping up, little tufts of dark purple here and there, whereas now it’s literally everywhere. The deep purple is a really enchanting color. I imagine if I was a bee or butterfly I would be like, I need that right now.

This is what the Common Milkweeds are looking like, now. No more blooms, big seed pods. Pretty awesome seed pods.

The other flower that’s really booming right now, in full bloom and everywhere, are the Coreopsis, called Tickseed. Apparently the name comes from the fact that the seeds look like ticks. I like that name, Tickseed. Coreopsis is a nice name too. The Coreopsis is booming. It’s a favorite of mine, right now.

Mingled with the Coreopsis was this flower. You didn’t see nearly as much of this one, but it was there. Not sure what it is.

The Coreopsis was really dominating an area on the edge of the park, that seems to be newly converted to wildflower grassland. This was underneath the train tracks. It’s interesting that you did not see as much ironweed over here, and the ironweed seemed to stick more to the edges. The Coreopsis really seems to show up en masse. There was a large patch of Coreopsis in the interior, huge meadow of the park, but otherwise it wasn’t represented so much there.

Amongst the Coreopsis field was this relic. A coneflower, either Black-eyed Susan or Purple Coneflower. After a long run their time seems to have come and gone. My neighbor’s have all about died away now too. They are a perennial though, so I think it’s just this part of the plant that dies. The roots are still alive and this plant will grow back next year.

This flower right here was looking a little different. And now I’ve done just some investigations, and it seems we have a bit of a problem. Narrow-leaved sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius) and Coreopsis (of which there are many kinds) look a lot alike. And now I wonder which is which, and I realize that I have no idea what I’m talking about. Well, can any plant experts tell us? Do we have both in these photos? Just one or the other?

(Well, a few days later I went to a gardening event at the park, and the gardener and naturalist Hazel told me that most of this stuff is Coreopsis. I was starting to be convinced it was not. Not sure if any of this is the sunflower. They do look a lot alike.)

The artsy fartsy shots I took today would have to be these shots of the train tracks and trellises. I was extremely lucky and had a train drive over me during my flower photographing. 2000 tons of steel and iron flying at 50 miles an hour right over my head. How incredible.

I have wanted to photograph these trellises for a long time, now.

*This is something I would try making black and white (possibly tinted), IF I were editing (I’m not)*

I got so lucky with that train.

Continuing on our tour of the park… These areas of wildflower growth at the borders are here because they aren’t being mowed anymore. I wonder if they have just been allowed to grow freely, or if they were seeded. I feel like they had to have been seeded because otherwise you would get a lot of unwanted things. I don’t think if you just stop mowing your yard it fills with Tennessean native plants. I’ll have to ask about that.

Now I’ll do a few miscellaneous photos here and show you some of the sights.

Had to take some photos of the cars. Cars are just asking to be photographed. It’s like they’re posing all the time.

*Something in the planter here. Cute flowers. What is it?*

Shelby Park has recently create a Nature Play area. It has been very successful and gets a lot of use. It’s a great idea. There’s a section out in the open, and then there’s a section that’s in the woods, where the kids can walk on logs and go down a slide and be in the trees.

*Nature play, Nature Center in the background*

The above photo is the Shelby Park Nature Center building. As you can see, it’s totally awesome. The roof is covered with plants, which helps keep the building cool and also adds some greenery to the world. It’s cool to see that, and I wonder how difficult it is to create and maintain such a roof. I would love to have a roof like this.

The building is on stilts because it’s by the river, and the river floods. There’s a sign that says the highest the water’s ever gotten, at least since that building was up, and it was in 2010 or something. It went all the way up to the top of those posts. I had wondered why this building was on stilts until I saw that sign. Then it made sense.

Now I’m just going to show you a series of botanical photos of interest. There some interesting flowers and grasses, and again I saw the nemesis, Chinese privet.

*Gray’s (Morning Star) Sedge* — *Carex grayii*

This is a grass I’ve been seeing. I had it in my yard, when I let the grass grow. Easy to recognize when it has those iconic seed pods. The name is fitting, Morning Star. It is a Tennesee native, which is good to know because it’s cool and awesome.

*Northern sea oats — Chasmanthium latifolium*

This grass was also standing out because of the interesting seeds. I literally just Googled “grass with flat seeds” and it was the first thing that came up. Seems to be quite common and easily recognizable. Those seeds are interesting because they are totally flat, like wafers.

Here’s the privet, it took awhile to find any. We have been doing a good job of removing it, but I knew I was going to see it eventually. It’s easy to spot when you know what to look for, there’s nothing else that really looks like it. It also stays green when everything else has lost its leaves, and then you can see just how much there is of it. Privet grows in Tennessee insanely well, unfortunately. Non-native.

*Saw a little bit of this small purple flower. Lavender?*

*Small and unassuming flowering plant with dainty flowers*

It’s funny that I am becoming a plant person after a long time of not knowing anything about plants. I think part of the deal with botany is that it’s intimidating. There are just so many plants. So many. And most of the time, they’re all green. What’s this? What’s that? It’s a flower. It’s grass. It’s a tree. But, when you see the same things over and over, you can start to recognize what’s what. Then, things stand out to you, you notice the same flower, and you start to wonder, what is this thing? I see it everywhere.

I think that’s really how it’s happening for me. I walk through this park so many times, I start to wonder what things are. It’s also interesting to see the cycles of growth, the plants that come and go, the flowers that come and go, throughout the year. It’s more obvious to see this when you have a meadow. The native meadow plants provide a lot of action in the summer and fall. We think of spring as being the time where everything blooms, but there are things blooming all year long, some things even blooming in winter. You could actually know what time of the season it was by what was blooming, if you didn’t have a calendar. You also could tell by the weather, I’m sure. And the position of the moon and the night sky, right?

Something I’ve started to notice a lot is the growth of trees in the meadows. Apparently a meadow is the early stage of the development of a forest. First, you have meadow, then you have an interim stage, with small trees, and then eventually you have a full, mature forest. I think this is called succession.

It’s interesting that annuals come before perennials. I think perennials take more time to get established, that’s my guess as to why that is. You can see succession happening in real time at Shelby Park. I’ll show you some photos of trees popping up in the meadow, that are leading the charge into the further stages of succession at Shelby.

Succession is why they say you are supposed to mow your meadow, I think, if you want it to stay a meadow. You have to remove the trees, otherwise you will not have a meadow anymore. I wonder what they will do at Shelby, possibly this fall or winter, if they want to keep the meadow a meadow, or if they will just allow it to convert. The reason they might want to do that is because meadows/praries are rarer now, and also they might want to keep it for the variety. (I’m not sure if our field is considered a prarie or a meadow, I just realized. Maybe it’s neither.)

Below are some photos of trees popping up amongst the wildflowers.

*This tree is a standalone. I wonder how it got here, if they let this one get established.*

*A maple? getting established. I wonder how old it is. Just this season?*

The above photo is a bench in a cleared pathway in the meadow. How pleasant! Probably no on sitting there for most of the day these days, as it is extremely hot. In the background you can see the large oak, standing alone in the meadow.

*What the ground is looking like these days*

On either side of the meadow there are some marshy, wet areas. They are dry as a bone right now. I wondered if the pond would have been totally dried up yet. Beavers, deer, and herons are usually hanging around here.

There were some patches of the meadow where I was seeing a ton of this plant. Anybody know what it is? Trees? Shrub or bush? Don’t know, but there was a lot of it, dominating its area.

I’ve been spotting the plant below recently as well. It’s just starting to bloom. Very pretty, kind of a standout. My mind is going to “thistle”.

Internet says this is Cirsium altissimum, a Tall Thistle. Native to eastern and central United States. That’s good.

*Butterfly enjoying the giant thistle landing pad*

*Tall thistle now starting to make a debut*

There are many flowers blooming right now, Zinnias, some sunflowers still left, dogwoods (if that’s what they are)… lots of trees are in bloom right now, and the wildflowers. Lots of food for the pollinators. So, we are now seeing butterflies everywhere.

*Narrow-waisted wasp on some tiny flowers*

The below photo, the grass, was standing out. I snapped a quick pic. I wish I would have taken some more photos but this was in the meadow, at this point I was really getting cooked, and flowers are still more interesting for me than grasses.

Sorry grasses. I’m sure I will have a grasses era someday.

There’s an interesting bat box out in the meadow, only one of them. I assume it is a bat-box.

Well folks, this is about everything I’ve got for you here. But there was ONE more thing, and it was actually the most incredible thing I saw on this field trip. It was the only thing I really have no explanation for. As I walked through the shaded, covered tunnel trail on my way to the meadow, I happened across a large, black spot on the path. I looked down, wondering what it was, and saw that it was absolutely teeming with wriggling things. Some of you who are squeamish may not want to look at the following photo. Luckily it is relatively low quality, as my camera was struggling in the dark, and with the difficult subject matter.

*Mystery mass — extremely ecologically interesting*

This mass is extremely interesting. I squatted down and looked at it, poked at it (with a stick of course) for as long as I could handle, because it made me incredibly sweaty and the mosquitoes were immediately descending on me. I have to tell you that I still have no idea what this really was or is. It looked like dirt, but how did it get there? And if it was poop — what kind of poop is that? How did it get so flattened out? And what about the creatures inside?

I thought they might have been parasites, but looking at them now, and thinking about how they were moving, they seem like they could be black soldier fly larvae. We have those in our compost pile, they look and move similarly. If they are, that means they would have to had hatched in this pile, so it must have been here for awhile… If it is dung… Do the eggs hatch that quickly? And what kind of dung is this? Were the larvae worms keeping it moist?

I’m open to theories. If anybody knows please tell us all. I’m still thinking about it.