Mature Prairie, part 2

Six years ago today, Steve and I got married and I moved onto this prairie. At that time, the main prairie behind our house was about five years old. Other pieces of land were being killed, and a few plots were either taking hold or being taken over by reed canary grass.

This year, after a lot more prairie burns, more spraying, planting, cutting thistle, and new prairie plots encroaching on the commons, the biggest pleasure has been the mature prairie below our bedroom window.

In an earlier post, I talked about the way that prairie was coming in after the spring burn, with spaces between the flowers and grasses. The war on the weeds seems finally won, and there’s a gentle beauty to this prairie.

The beauty has come in waves, purple, yellow, and white, as the flowers take turns blooming. Right now, there’s a wave of tick trefoil through the prairie, and the bergamot and coneflowers are just coming in.

It’s hard in a photograph to capture the scope of the prairie.

In the first years, I would walk around with my camera, chronicling and learning the names of all the new flowers. Looking for new, bright blooms.

There is still new prairie, bursting with its recent seeding, along the edge of the lawn. I know the flowers better now, but each year I have to be reminded of their names.

Every flower is a revelation, and I’m constantly stopped in my tracks by the beauty of where I live. It’s a life I couldn’t imagine ten years ago. And I swear, I can’t look out our dining room window without seeing monarch butterflies dancing in the breeze. It’s like those online Jacquie Lawson cards my aunt sends me each year for my birthday.

But what I really love is the mature prairie, not the gaudy, stuffed plots of flowers of the first years. And yes, there is a metaphor in that.