Between
the lower field of the farm and the cultivated grounds of Anna Maria, the acre
of fallow land has changed notably these past several years. Time was when one
of the men would use the tractor and mowing deck to cut back the yearly scrub,
leaving this land a shorn breakline between field and college.
It has
always been a wet parcel, where the water table rises on bedrock that is close
to the soil, such that the spring season finds water percolating here on the
surface, flowing down the natural valley. The moist soil promotes all sorts of
early successional plants to thrive, and hence necessitates the aggressive
mowing.
This
has been neglected these past several years, and the field is now replete with
sumac trees and tall grasses, the former so dense that it is nearly impossible
to walk through.
They
are beautiful now, to see them from the two-track that connects the upper to
the lower field, hundreds of sumacs, all leafless and skeletal, reaching upward
in disarray. Most bear the red candle, faded somewhat from the cardinal flame
of a month ago.
Spread
within are sere milkweed plants, dozens of them with dried pods that lay open
with silken seeds that have spilled forth. When the breeze strikes, several
scatter about, lifting among the sumacs and floating upward and beyond to the
lower woods.
It is
simply beautiful here.
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