Goldenrods and Asters

Yesterday, Pat and I mapped our final trees on our property as we prepare our agroforestry and conservation plans.

This process of meeting and greeting each tree has been enlightening. (I will share more about that later.) One fairly basic way that it expanded our getting to know this woodland, (in which we’ve been living for seven years), is that it took us to places we seldom or never trod. 

In an attempt to try to identify a “mystery tree”, we made our way through fairly thick brambles – snaking our bodies through branch mazes – limboing underneath branches that tugged at my hat. We got coated in burrs as we followed dapples of sunshine to freedom. 

This thicket is an area of the woods that lies in between meadow and woodland. It is choked with weed trees like honeysuckle that bush out in the unobstructed sunshine. I have seen bunnies scamper there into its protection, and I have seen the remnants of prey that was taken there to be eaten undisturbed. 

And there we were captured in it – like a fly in a spider’s web – struggling to make our way out. 

Happily – as we made our belabored way, we encountered a cluster of goldenrod and asters! While there are a fair amount of white asters throughout the woods, these were beautiful purple and pink asters! What a glorious find. Of course I thought about Braiding Sweetgrass and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writing about this dynamic duo that enhances one another when planted alongside one another. 

Perhaps that is how Pat and I not only made our way through the thicket, he bent branches and I pointed to paths. But also it’s how we made our map. He identified trees, and I translated their 3D existence to a 2D map. Together we went to new places and created a document that has never existed before.