Timeous Turtle Trek

"Arf, Arf, Arf;" the neighbors dog, Huck, was barking incessantly last night as I traipsed around the garden, trimming dead canes off a rose here, transplanting a rose or two there, and watering seedling, just-purchased roses.  Eventually, Bella and I sought him out, curious as to what he had found on the prairie, 20 feet off of my neighbor's driveway.  I was betting snake, but as it turned out, I was quite wrong.  The dog had found a large turtle, probably a quarter mile west and above our pond, heading straight as an arrow towards my neighbors pond, across the blacktop driveway and another quarter mile down the next draw.




This seemingly ancient creature is a
Snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina, identified by its long tail and ridged shell.  Yesterday evening, that turtle's tail was as expressive as any dog's, flipping angrily whenever Huck got too close.  Hunkered down for the photo here, he just wanted to be left alone on his journey, presumably in search of more abundant food or agreeable mate or both.  As always, when I run across such creatures, I do a little reading, and found out from Wiki that the folklore about snapping turtles biting off fingers and toes is just a myth, with no confirmed cases.  Although they can certainly apply a painful bite, and while you shouldn't pick one up by the shell because their necks can stretch completely around their armor, they actually have less bite force than a human.  They often live 20-25 years, with a maximum reported age of 38 years, so I wonder what the chances are of this being the same just-hatched turtle that my daughter found during a 2014 burn?  Probably not a likely coincidence but it's fun to think about it.

Up until the turtle, it was a peaceful evening in the garden.  I had spent some time admiring the first blooms of some dark red Asiatic lilies (photo at the top) that I planted as summertime filler among the viburnum bed.  There used to be other colors and varieties planted in the bed, but the only long term survivors seem to be deep red.  Not that I'm complaining, because I swoon over that dark rich color against the green of rose and viburnum foliage.


I have and encourage other fillers in these beds, but I count on serendipity and Mother Gaia to supply the most important.  Everywhere that the Butterfly Milkweed,  Asclepias tuberosa, (left, above) decides to show up as a "weed," I let it remain in all its orange glory.  In a similar fashion, I'll allow any Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) (right) to grow unmolested in any bed.  The fantastic fragrance of these wildflowers, especially the Common Milkweed, are an early gift to me, and their value as a food source for caterpillars and butterflies make them all keepers in my gentle garden.

Turtles and milkweed were the sendoff last night for me to seek satisfied slumber with dreams of butterflies and blooms.

The Earth Laughs in...Milkweeds?

Almost every gardener has surely read or heard the famous quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Earth laughs in flowers," lifted from his 1847 poem Hamatreya.   Most of us equate this line with a calm and loving Mother Earth, gently expressing her warmth and love.  Within the context of the poem, however, the Earth is laughing at the silliness of man, who believes he is master and owner of the Earth, but who will nonetheless end up beneath the earth, pushing up daisies.  Whatever his good qualities were, Emerson was also a cynical old fart.

The tallgrass prairie laughs at me, I suppose, also in flowers, but they are the flowers of milkweeds.  This area of my pasture (see, there I go, believing I'm the owner instead of a temporary part of the scenery) is the area we used in construction of the barn, first to pile all the dirt from the excavation, and later scraped clean again as the dirt was used to fill in around the foundation.  Somewhere, deep in the soil of the prairie, an infinite number of milkweed seeds must be waiting, biding time until the stubborn grasses give ground.  

This milkweed is Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, a member of the Dogbane family and poisonous and inedible as forage.  I've always viewed it as a two-foot-tall weed in my pasture, tolerated by me because of its usefulness to monarch butterflies, but it does have some other positives.  A couple of years back I found it was growing in the K-State Native Plant Garden and didn't recognize the magnificent five foot tall, very fragrant plants.  I was embarrassed when the director told me what it was.  Seriously, a mass of Common Milkweed has the same affect as an Oriental lily on the air in its vicinity, but the milkweed fragrance is far sweeter and somehow less smothering.  I've also learned to my surprise that Asclepias syriaca is a perennial.  If I'm going to be laughed at anyway, I need to allow a few of them to grow in MY garden.  I might as well make them feel welcome if they're going to be lurking around anyway.

I hope Ralph Waldo Emerson (why do we always use his middle name...how many other famous Ralph Emerson's are there anyway?) doesn't mind me calling the garden, "MY garden."  I may be borrowing the soil and sunlight and rainfall and the air, but I maintain nonetheless that the garden is mine.  I arranged it, I defend it against all marauders floral or faunal, and when I go beneath it, it will soon also cease to exist.  For a while, I suppose, to become a milkweed patch, but eventually the milkweed will lose too.  This is the prairie, and on the prairie, the grasses always win.