The stiltgrass stems are beginning to redden. In the shadows of the trees, funnel spider webs still sag with their night’s haul of dew.
Japanese stiltgrass
While I’ve been gone, two invading armies have battled for control of the yard. The stiltgrass seems to be winning against the periwinkle.
Holes open and close in the fast-moving clouds. Where the snow has gone from the yard, a white eggshell rests on the flattened stiltgrass.
Despite the fact that we’ve had no snow yet, the Japanese stiltgrass is already lying down in spiral patterns with here and there a cowlick.
All the stiltgrass has turned burgundy—”the wine-dark yard.” In the woods, a steady procession of falling birch leaves.
The Japanese stiltgrass is beginning to redden from the stems out. My niece goes up and down the road in the car, learning to drive.
In the two months I’ve been away, my yard and garden have turned alien, taken over by stiltgrass. The buzz of a hummingbird in the bergamot.
A series of loud sneezes from the dead goldenrod at the woods’ edge where a deer must be bedded down. A junco forages in the stiltgrass.
The yard is white with the first frost, prostrate myrtle and stiltgrass leaves outlined as if in chalk. Leaves spiral down in the still air.
The lilac trembles from rain without and a flock of migrant sparrows within. The stiltgrass in the yard seems redder than yesterday.
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The Morning Porch will be on hiatus until October 9. (Keep visiting, though, to read the daily archival posts in the sidebar!)
The storm just past, a bald-faced hornet flies back and forth over the flattened stiltgrass. The crickets pick up where they left off.
Overcast and cool. I pull a few clumps of stiltgrass and my hand starts to itch—chiggers? The high, strangled calls of a raven.
Coffee mug in one hand, I’m weeding stiltgrass from the herb bed. Such a delicate invader, so easy to kill! And yet so tough to eradicate.
One of the autumn grasses beloved of Basho blooms an alien red at the edge of the yard. Sudden jumbled music from a V of non-migrant geese.