To Market, To Market

Reinventing myself: again. And doing it solo. I hardly know where to start.

So I won’t. Not yet. Maybe soon. Until then, a few observations and images from my late spring peregrinations of body and spirit. There is plenty to do and see here. But not from the LazyBoy. I need to get out. I really need to get out.

And I did, Saturday, to attend the Columbia Farmer’s Market for the first time, where I met some new and some familiar native plants along the margins. (Do check out the market page, Floyd Folk, it is really quite impressive. And like Floyd’s market, it is a community gathering place on Saturdays. I will go back often.)

The most interesting shrub at a distance I first thought was a milkweed. The distinctive UMBEL “ball of flowers” fooled me. This plant is in the rose family, which I could tell on closer examination by the few clusters in flower.

It grows in every state I have lived in but I never made note of it. (Range maps have it as NOT native to Missouri.)

This beautiful native shrub is NINEBARK. If I had a yard that needed foundation plantings, I’d consider this one. It should attract a lot of interest for its flower and later, a huge number of seeds.

Growing and Caring for Ninebark

One plant I knew but had not seen in a long while was Cup Plant—so called because it has clasping leaf bases around a square stem that will hold water.

I have a shot of those leaf “ponds” but the aphids grazing like tiny cows on the underside of a cup plant leaf is more interesting.

Spiderwort is a common wildflower, but even so, I was delighted to find it in abundance along wet margins of the market. I recalled that is has been used as a biosensor to detect radiation. And it has a Pocohantas connection.

See It with Flowers: A BioSensor for Radiation

And lastly, unless I already lost you, I was delighted for the first time to see a tree in flower that I usually only notice when the smallish tree is in fruit in the fall. I would be interested to know if anyone recognizes it. I sure did not at first. See the caption for the ID.

This is persimmon in flower.

I am sure I’ve said this before (heck I’ve said everything before by now) but looking for and finding old friends in the Green World is very like chancing upon a fond acquaintance again after seasons apart.

In the absence of bipedal friends, I am thankful for my botanical buddies and for adding new contacts to my list of known and named beings in the plant world.

Now: I am eager to find those bipedals, feeling more than a little disconnected just now, and immersed in exploring the both-and of loneliness and solitude. I am in the market for a new way of life. More, anon.