Ferning

Gardening is the most direct connection we have to the earth. Pushing those DNA packets we call seeds into the soil, adding water, making choices about which green things live and which don't in the space we're tending, it just doesn't get more primal than that.

Some of our closest neighbors on our river are ferns. Their lacy texture has fascinated the human eye forever. Of the six subjects that I want to study this year (or start studying -- I have a hunch that this is the beginning of a lifelong research project), plants are the first on the list. Of course, that's a GIANT subject so it yearns for a narrower focus. Since one of the books I found at the 5 Colleges Book Sale this April was a guide to ferns, the narrowing was simple.

This is a photograph of maidenhair fern. We've been watching this patch at the foot of a tree along our path for several years, carefully extracting anything that tries to grow among its fronds. This is the starlet among the ferns we have here because it is so rare. Every so often, I think I've spotted another patch in the early spring when it rises pink and curled from the soil. But I can never find it a second time.