Another cool and quiet autumn morning. The snakeroot has faded to a blowsy brown just as the goldenrod reaches its pinnacle of yellow.
snakeroot
8/27/2023
Crystal-clear and still. At first light, the soft calls of wood thrushes, no doubt tired and hungry after their all-night flights. Pale crowds of snakeroot seem to glow.
8/22/2023
A gray squirrel with a nearly white tail scampering up the road draws my attention to the white snakeroot—banks of it just coming into bloom.
9/3/2022
As above, so below: white sky, white snakeroot. A hummingbird buzzes in to bother the jewelweed below the porch.
8/20/2021
Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.
9/18/2020
First light. Ghostly figures in the meadow shrink into common snakeroot. The distant gargle of a truck jake-breaking off the interstate.
9/24/2018
The flat white sky prompts me to notice that the white snakeroot—a plant that clouds up the meadow, being toxic to deer—has gone to seed.
8/31/2016
The clouds of white snakeroot in my yard host one tiger swallowtail, glamorous as a celebrity in a trailer court. A raven’s metallic croak.
8/30/2015
Wasps wallow through mounds of snakeroot flowers. At the woods’ edge, a yellow leaf trapped by a caterpillar thread never stops twirling.
8/22/2015
Even at late morning, it’s chilly when the sun goes in. The yard is now white with snakeroot flowers. The distant sound of a power saw.
8/16/2014
A scattering of white in my overgrown garden: soapwort, bindweed, fleabane, snakeroot. The sky brightens. A towhee calls from the lilac.
8/31/2013
In the half-light of dawn, white snakeroot glowing in the meadow, the unending shhhhh of tree crickets, clatter of a squirrel venturing out.
9/9/2012
Scattered drips of dew from the top roof. A doe and fawn ghost by along the woods’ edge, the fawn’s spots as faded as snakeroot flowers.
9/12/2009
Rain starts almost imperceptibly, thickening from shimmer to mist to curtain. Early goldenrod and white snakeroot are both fading to brown.