Ferns Unfurling.
When I step outside and see everything waking up, there are these tropical looking plants. Lush, green, shade-tolerant, they’re coming up all over the place. With their elaborate cone networks hidden underground they could be be hard to manage if I try to manage them some year.
Ferns are a species that hardly look like they belong in Minnesota, they’re tropical looking. But they established themselves in my yard years ago, stretching out underground on the edges. I’m not from here, and you can tell. But I find myself transplanted.
This year I didn’t, and I asked what kind of fern is this that we have here with all these baby greenlings? That’s when I heard Eloise speak. Why don’t I invite myself to visit the Eloise Butler Wildflower Refuge more often? Eloise! It’s a 120 year old public garden with a beautiful front gate. It is a few fenced acres on the west side of Minneapolis and I live less than three miles away.
I decided to blog to embrace the struggle of being human in the world. A part of the Eloise Sanctuary is called The Quaking Bog. Inspiration will get bogged down by fear, indecision or overwhelm. Eloise Butler quietly carried on a crusade of her own devising. She was a retired science teacher self-tasked with saving local plants from disappearing due to land development. If I have opportunity I will save a falcon and a fox for release before some pretty fern. But I feel like Eloise in other ways. She had a natural aversion to self-revelation, and ran her garden on the political principal of laissez-faire..Fancy appearances avoided, plants allowed to grow as they will, plants allowed to spread without any check. No pre-defined beds or borders. I have no themes or topics planned. And Eloise followed uncanny inner impulses. That sounds interesting. At various times while hunting for a certain kind of wildflower to salvage for her garden, she felt led by something invisible, like maybe two ghostly botanist friends.
Ferns are a species that hardly look like they belong in Minnesota, they’re tropical looking. But they established themselves in my yard years ago, stretching out underground on the edges. I’m not from here, and you can tell. But I find myself transplanted.
Golden Valley is a first tier suburb of Minneapolis, about 5 miles from the city skyline. Our two story 1955 farmhouse on a hill used to be surrounded by farm fields. The pond across the road is now circled by cottonwoods, elms and buckthorn. It collects rainwater and teems with life. I like living in close proximity to the banks of the big Mississippi River. Up here after winter, old houses audibly exhale. If the time is right and you step into a suburban yard like mine, you can catch a shy and alien uncurl beginning around it. One by one, pale green stems extend quietly up to the overcast sky. Some roll out first, they’re braver. Eventually, a great number make themselves known. These fernlings do this every spring, right under my nose.
For many years I missed it.
This year I didn’t, and I asked what kind of fern is this that we have here with all these baby greenlings? That’s when I heard Eloise speak. Why don’t I invite myself to visit the Eloise Butler Wildflower Refuge more often? Eloise! It’s a 120 year old public garden with a beautiful front gate. It is a few fenced acres on the west side of Minneapolis and I live less than three miles away.
I went back there this spring to visit, and it was walking in there that I saw a blog could be like a garden, intentionally maintained in a rustic state, paths but no beds. At times I do hear myself say things that sound like they came out of the year 1900 when this garden was begun, and not 2020. In the Eloise Wildflower Sanctuary there are supposedly 500 plant species including ferns. I’m more interested in all the birds and wildlife: the red fox, muskrat, raccoons, opossum, mink, deer. But no sitting on the benches allowed at this moment in time, new COVID park and rec rules (May 16, 2020)! Now I won’t be going there to sit, just walk through. And there are people in line at Eloise sometimes now!
I decided to blog to embrace the struggle of being human in the world. A part of the Eloise Sanctuary is called The Quaking Bog. Inspiration will get bogged down by fear, indecision or overwhelm. Eloise Butler quietly carried on a crusade of her own devising. She was a retired science teacher self-tasked with saving local plants from disappearing due to land development. If I have opportunity I will save a falcon and a fox for release before some pretty fern. But I feel like Eloise in other ways. She had a natural aversion to self-revelation, and ran her garden on the political principal of laissez-faire..Fancy appearances avoided, plants allowed to grow as they will, plants allowed to spread without any check. No pre-defined beds or borders. I have no themes or topics planned. And Eloise followed uncanny inner impulses. That sounds interesting. At various times while hunting for a certain kind of wildflower to salvage for her garden, she felt led by something invisible, like maybe two ghostly botanist friends.
So Hello. Welcome to my wordy woodland, friend and frond and enemy fond.
Come, holy and unheard and unseen.
Come up, all you plain and invasive thoughts.
Almost everything is allowed to grow here,
at least for awhile.
Everything is in process.
A sort of wild garden in progress here.
Eloise is the early muse, and this is a place.
A place for sharing this space and moment in time
with you,
All these ferns unfurling.
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