garden : mystery flowers, lily refugees, and stumps

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White mystery flowers.

There are these little white flowers that spring up all over our neighborhood in late spring. For a long time I thought they were spring star flower; now that I’ve received some ipheion from a neighbor I can see they’re different. I now believe they are zephyr lilies, however the most commonly described variety appears to be only one flower per bulb without branching stems and are listed as blooming in autumn. They could be a native regional variety in the same family; I haven’t been able to tell from photos whether this variety has a branching stem, although the habitat description certainly fits with our town. At any rate, I moved several clumps of them out of the lawn last year and into the small bed with the daffodils, on the right side of the porch steps. Only two bulbs sent up flowers but the greenery did quite well; as with the crocuses, I’m hoping to get many more flowers next year.

In addition to puzzling over these little white flowers, I spent some time this weekend transplanting perennial lilies from my neighbor’s front foundation beds. The folks who owned the house before her planted hundreds of spring bulbs through their flower beds a couple of years ago, and the lilies in particular are now coming up everywhere. True lilies are not my favorite flower—I find the scent overpowering—however, in the spirit of providing a refuge for the neighbors’ flowers, I took some and planted them along the back fence behind the peonies. Of course, as soon as I had them in the ground I became paranoid that they would bring black mold with them that would destroy the carefully nurtured peonies just as they’re ready to flower for the first time. This is the life of a novice gardener; never being quite sure that what you’re doing is really the best thing for the plants, always fearing that you’ve missed some crucial piece of information in the one gardening book you chose not to consult. In this case, nurturing the peonies has meant weeding around them, clearing the mulch off the crowns in early spring, and otherwise leaving them completely to their own devices. I’m sure it will be fine, and I can always resort to spraying toxins if things get completely out of hand. Not that I’m likely to go that route, but it sometimes helps to remind myself that the nuclear option is there, anchoring the other end of the continuum.

While I was busy moving lilies, my partner was hard at work removing stumps. You may remember that we are still in pioneer mode when it comes to the beds in the backyard, dedicating enormous amounts of time, energy, and sweat to clearing the various sapling stumps, pricker bushes, grapevines, English ivy, liriope, violets, Virginia creeper, and last but certainly not least, poison ivy. The way that works is that we work together with the spade to clear several yards of ground of anything that can be easily dug out, and then my partner spends hours toiling alone with the landscape bar and the tree saw to uproot the pricker bushes and tree stumps. Sometimes we invite friends over for this process, have a beer afterwards, and call it a party. Last weekend it was just us, and it was only the two stumps; nothing like two years ago when we did battle with the pokeweeds for what seemed like months and was really just days. As it has been every year, my goal is to have the side beds cleared of weeds and under mulch by the first frost. Why give it up? It’s a good goal!

We all have to have something to strive for, and my something is a yard bordered by flat brown stretches of bark chips. When that day finally arrives, I’ll be glad to move on to a goal involving actual plants. For now, the front yard is where I am able to fulfill my desire to have living, growing, flowering plants, and I let the backyard be where the killing happens.

garden : mystery flowers, lily refugees, and stumps

J-Wen Farm milk redux

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After missing the market for a couple of weeks while traveling, I caught up with both the J-Wen farmer and the Riverdale market coordinator on Thursday. Both were eager to address my concerns about the spoiled milk, and I agreed to take another quart to test out. This time around, the milk was fine; the spoilage was likely a result of being out in the heat too long, both on display and while I transported it home. The J-Wen folks have moved their display over to the shadier side of the market, and I have been duly instructed to get the milk home into the fridge as quickly as possible after purchasing it. If we go that route in the future, I’ll remember to go to the market in the car.

All’s well that ends well, and there doesn’t appear to be any processing problem at work, just hot days slightly too much time out in the sun.

J-Wen Farm milk redux

vacation : new life birds on Hilton Head

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When we planned our trip to Hilton Head, I researched the refuges in the area and decided to stick with Pinckney Island NWR. It is close to the island, just over the bridge on the way to the mainland, and it promised miles of walking trails. Once we arrived in the area, I have to admit that the alligators put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for going hiking around in the marshes. I was nearly content to have spotted a Yellow-throated Warbler for the first time just across the street from our rental, in addition to Brown Thrasher, House Finch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Common Grackle, Boat-tailed Grackle, Northern Mockingbird, Eastern Bluebird, Tufted Titmouse, Green Heron, Great Blue Heron, Downy Woodpecker, Mourning Dove, Rock Dove, and Carolina Chickadee just in the residential area where we were staying. In the end I manned up, and we went ahead with the plan and spent a productive Wednesday afternoon at the refuge, spotting several new life birds and revisiting some old favorites.

Just inside the refuge, there was a flock of migrating Whimbrels, with a Black-bellied Plover, a couple of Dunlins, and some Semi-Palmated Plovers mixed in. There was also a larger gray bird that was either a Willet or a Red Knot in winter plumage; having seen both of these birds before we chose not to spend all day squinting through our under-powered binoculars to make a firm identification. Shorebirds are the most frustrating to identify with the binoculars we have; they’re typically farther away with less distinctive coloring than woodland birds, so we’ve learned to do our best and then move on. Once inside on the paths we saw old friends—Northern Cardinal, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Carolina Wren, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher—but none of the tanagers that were rumored to be around. On the mudflats we saw our next new bird, a flock of White Ibis with brown-backed young. Further along, at the aptly named Ibis Pond, we found herons of all shapes and sizes, those we’d seen before (Great Blue Heron, Green Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Black-crowned Night Heron) and two lovely new additions: Little Blue Heron, Tri-colored Heron, and an adult male Anhinga (we later saw a female near our house). The Little Blue Heron wasn’t exactly the first sighting; we’d seen a young one the day before along the lagoons where we were staying, and I probably saw one during our trip to Chincoteague five years ago. Nonetheless, this was the first up close and confirmed sighting of an adult bird for me, and it was fun to watch it fly back and forth bringing bits of grass and twigs for a nest.

After hanging out at Ibis Pond for a while, we hiked a loop around what was advertised as Osprey Pond and Wood Stork Island, highly motivated to get a sight of the uncommon and elusive Wood Stork. We never did. What we did catch sight of, though, were gazillions of mosquitoes and a few alligators; the latter sighting led us to conclude that Pied-billed Grebes must not be very tasty, because on two occasions they were the only bird in the water near the enormous prehistoric reptile. During this trek we saw more Eastern Bluebirds, several Great-crested Flycatchers, an Eastern Phoebe, Red-winged Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbirds, the aforementioned Grebes, and a pair of Common Moorhens, but nary a stork. Nor an Osprey for that matter, but we had the excessive good fortune to have an Osprey nest in a palm tree behind the house next door, complete with young that plaintively cried out each morning as its parents harried it from the nest and into the air. Having booked it out the woods at the refuge and left the grass paths behind, we made another circuit of Ibis Pond in the hopes of finding a Wood Stork but only saw a couple more alligators, which apparently aid the nesting birds by eating predators like raccoons should they attempt to go for the nest. Or so the sign near the bench where we collapsed in a haze of citronella spray informed us. On the way out of the refuge, we did manage to see a male Painted Bunting at close range, which cheered our spirits greatly; they nest on the refuge and we’d been unable to flush one on the way in. I consider six new life birds to be a successful excursion, and I left happy; having to bark at some mating raccoons to get them off the path was just icing on the cake.

Overall, Hilton Head was a great place for wildlife sightings. In the lagoons around our housing development we saw several kinds of very large turtles, one of which we had to rescue from the middle of a road—Carolina Diamondback Terrapins, Eastern Mud Turtles, probably Chicken Turtles, and possibly Common Musk Turtles (I believe I saw the distinctive two lines on the head, but they dislike brackish water). We had Green Anoles around the house, and my partner startled a Five-lined Skink out of the bathroom when we visited Daufuskie Island on Thursday. During the boat ride over, we also spotted a couple of new birds—Royal Tern and what we are pretty sure was a White Pelican—and some familiar ones (Brown Pelican, Double-crested Cormorant, Least Tern, Forster’s Tern, Laughing Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Barn Swallow and Tree Swallow) in addition to several groups of Bottlenose Dolphins. We saw a whole flock of Black Vultures along the side of a road, with their white hands. Add to these the starfish, crabs, clams, and keyhole urchins we saw on the beach, plus the dead armadillos on the side of I-95 and the mystery snake we saw the heron eating behind our house, and it was quite the wildlife-filled vacation.

vacation : new life birds on Hilton Head

garden : I fought the lawn and the lawn won

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Our timing could not have been better in terms of maximizing the growth of the lawn during a one week vacation. The entire week prior to our vacation, it poured rain, ensuring that I could not top up the lawn mowing (so to speak) before leaving. The first weekend we were away, it was dry and there was a heat wave. Nothing grass loves more than nice hot sun after being soaked for days; I say ‘grass’ here when I really mean clover, violets, catmint, et cetera. When we returned not only was the crabgrass tall enough for Jack to scurry up it, all the regular grass had also gone to seed. Great for reseeding the lawn and attracting pollinators, not so great for mowing. And, of course, it was still raining.

Normally I’m not that fussy about the lawn and relatively impervious to the fear that the neighbors will judge us on the basis of the state of the grass. Still, this was a little much, and it drove me to use the hour by hour weather prediction feature on my preferred weather website to find the earliest time this week that would have the maximum drying time prior to mowing and enough time prior to more rain to get the whole lawn cut; that time was 12pm yesterday. Thankfully, it was still cool, as 12pm is not typically my first choice for lawn mowing. I hauled the electric mower out of the garage and went to it. The mower performed valiantly—I only had to stop twice to clear the blocked chute thingy through which the cut grass gets thrown out onto the lawn—but it really was no match for the situation, what with having to avoid running over the cord and the one wheel that likes to reset its height as you go and the screws on the handle that like to rattle themselves loose. The mower itself is a tank, a Black and Decker that was given to us by my friend’s mother when we moved in, so in terms of plowing through a meadow it’s a good choice. For regular everyday use, I’m looking forward to the time I can get a zippy new generation Neuton. I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that time will be when the current mower is dead, a category for which one gimpy wheel, some loose screws, and a missing rubber flap does not yet qualify it.

The nature of the lawn, as I’m sure you know, is that it grows. The nature of my mowing of the lawn is that I invariably omit to mow one of the tucked away parts of the lawn. This time I remembered the bit up by the stairs to the basement around the side of the house—which was, as the kids say, out of control as I’d forgotten it the last two times—and forgot the section outside the back gate along the alley and the bit by the garage on the other side of the walk. I’ll get back to them when it stops raining.

garden : I fought the lawn and the lawn won

gay marriage and the US Constitution

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The past few weeks have been exciting ones for gender parity in civil marriage, and it looks like there’s more to come. Iowa and Vermont have joined Massachusetts and Connecticut in ending the use of gender as a qualifier for marriage eligibility, and the legislatures of New Hampshire and Maine have passed their own bills that await the signatures of the Governors to become law.

These developments are great for people who want to be legally married, there’s no doubt about that. They are also great for law nerds in love with the Constitution, as a full-blown constitutional crisis is brewing with all these changes. Closer to home, and most significantly from a legal perspective, the District of Columbia just passed a bill (expected to be signed into law by Mayor Fenty in the next few days) that joins New York and makes explicit a recognition of all marriages performed in any state in the country. I say ‘makes explicit’ because the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the federal Constitution requires that states recognize the legal acts and proceedings of other states, which includes legal marriages and adoptions, as well as debts, wills, and the transfer of deeds to things like cars and houses. You wouldn’t, for example, expect to drive over a state line and no longer be the owner of your car. Every time a person has moved to a new state and filed their taxes as part of a married couple or enrolled their adopted child in school, they’ve relied on this provision.

Before the furor over people of the same gender marrying each other, it would have been ludicrous to suggest that a person could be married in one state but not the next one over, or could be the legal guardian of a child here but not there. Freedom of movement would be greatly constrained by such a position, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause would be similarly undermined. Yet this is the position that several states, Virginia among them, took in their zeal to block people of the same gender from marrying each other (many more states passed amendments limiting marriage to persons of opposite gender without explicitly denying recognition of the acts of other states). Instantly, a constitutional conflict was born, one that has only become more nuanced with time. When Massachusetts modified their marriage laws last year to grant licenses to non-residents, the Full Faith and Credit Clause moved front and center; what would happen to same-gender couples when they returned to their home states? (Opposite-gender couples would still be married, as they’d always been, as a matter of course.) New York was the first state to move to recognize all out-of-state marriages, via court rulings; the District of Columbia is the first jurisdiction to recognize all out-of-state marriages via legislation.

From a nerdy legal perspective all of this adds up to, I think it’s fair to say, the most interesting bundle of legal decisions to be made regarding the interpretation of the Constitution and the reconciliation of federal and state legislation since the Jim Crow era. There are, of course, the state-level conflicts regarding the granting of certain privileges to some while depriving others, both within a given state via amendments restricting marriage to people of opposite genders, and between two states as described above. Beyond those concerns, there remain the Equal Protection Clause issues of whether DOMA discriminates on the basis of gender and whether the federal recognition of some legal marriages and not others is a prima facie violation regardless of any gender stipulations (and of course, the even nerdier question of whether the clause can be addressed directly to federal legislation). May we live in interesting times, indeed!

Sadly, for those hoping to have their marriages recognized by the federal government and any state in which they might want to live and work, we’re not likely to have resolution to these questions for some time now, I’d say on the order of years. First, we need some test cases; the Massachusetts case challenging the federal recognition of some legal marriages but not others is a start. Getting a plaintiff with standing to challenge the violations of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is trickier from a practical standpoint; it’s asking a lot for a family to move to a place where their marriage rights (or better yet, the legal adoption of their child) will be summarily removed, and theoretical restrictions on movement are not enough to bring a case. Next, there will have to be conflicts for the Supreme Court to hear the case; in the instance of a direct challenge to the constitutionality of DOMA, that will probably happen. In the instance of differential state-level provisions, a Circuit-level difference of interpretation would normally be required; in this situation, the Court might choose to speak to that question while addressing DOMA, but realistically that would only happen if the Court were going to rule that DOMA violated the Equal Protection Clause. Which brings us to the last and most crucial step, having the case be heard by a Court committed to ruling on the legal questions rather than the social ones. It is no doubt the preference of the Court to leave marriage eligibility to the states, as has historically been done with voting eligibility, but the overt conflicts will require a ruling at some point.

Everything could be sped up and made easier for the Court if Congress were to overturn DOMA, as the Full Faith and Credit issues are the most clearcut. Without DOMA, the federal government would recognize all legally married couples regardless of gender. The laws in Massachusetts and Iowa, which grant licenses to out-of-state couples, create a situation where anyone with the means to travel to one of these states may become legally married and could gain access to federal marriage privileges. This course of action would leave to the Court the need to rule only on the relatively mundane legal issue of requiring states to recognize the actions of other states; as this is made explicit in the Constitution, it need not be controversial at all.

gay marriage and the US Constitution