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.
Japanese stiltgrass
10/23/2012
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.
10/13/2012
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.
10/2/2012
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!)
8/14/2011
The storm just past, a bald-faced hornet flies back and forth over the flattened stiltgrass. The crickets pick up where they left off.
8/2/2010
Overcast and cool. I pull a few clumps of stiltgrass and my hand starts to itch—chiggers? The high, strangled calls of a raven.
6/14/2010
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.
9/18/2009
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.