Pioneers

The development where we live now is a relatively new one, and there are patches of recently disturbed "vacant" ground dotted around its periphery. In particular, there's a knoll out our back window that was scraped and reshaped by earth-moving machinery just last year. In one growing season it has gone from bare earth to a thriving and complex meadow ecosystem. A cover crop may have been broadcast for erosion control, but most of what has sprouted up appears to have arisen from seeds that lay dormant in the ground for months or years, awaiting an opportunity to germinate.

My unscientific survey finds, just beyond our walls, Queen Anne's lace, yarrow, great mullein, hare's-foot clover and several other clovers, crown vetch, purple vetch, and bird's-foot trefoil, various grasses, fireweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius), asters and goldenrods (probably several species of both), boneset (which a worried neighbor mistook for poison hemlock), thistles, and evening-primrose. Down an adjoining embankment, where there has been growth for a longer period, there are cattails and phragmites, blackberry brambles, pokeweed, whorled and purple loosestrife, and agalinis. That's not counting the ones I haven't noticed or can't identify. A healthy percentage of these plants are so-called "aliens" that weren't part of the precolumbian landscape of North America but have long since become naturalized.

An even less scientific survey turns up a host of insects, notably various dragonflies, bees, wasps, beetles, and a scattering of butterflies (but few swallowtails and monarchs, perhaps because the milkweeds haven't yet appeared). There are orb-weavers and other spiders, and unfortunately ticks as well. We've had regular visits from wild turkeys and deer and occasional sightings of coyotes, groundhogs, and skunks. One evening we spotted a porcupine browsing unhurriedly and almost invisibly among the clumps of herbage.

Earlier in the summer there were woodcocks buzzing and courting at dusk, and goldfinches, bluebirds, hummingirds, and mourning doves have been abundant. We hear owls often, and no doubt they hunt for voles and other small mammals as soon as the sun goes down.There is certainly far more that we don't see than what we do.

A dirt road leading out of the back of the development has been widened and graded in the last few weeks, and further construction is expected. No doubt the resident and transient flora and fauna will be in flux for some time. But it's astonishing how quickly and vigorously life can seize hold, given half a chance.

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Many of the plant species mentioned above, as well as their faunal associates, are profiled by John Eastman in The Book of Field and Roadside: Open-Country Weeds, Trees and Wildflowers of Eastern North America (2003). Like its companions The Book of Forest and Thicket and The Book of Swamp and Bog it is illustrated with line drawings by Amelia Hansen, and was published by Stackpole Books; all three volumes now seem to be out of print.