Stability

Is this a showy aster (Aster spectabilis)? I was confused before about this very same plant. On August 19, under the heading "Asters" I wondered whether it might be a New England aster (Aster novae angliae), and doubted myself. This is the strength of good record-keeping. Now I know the flowers, and I was mistaken, but not to the degree I believed in August. This species of aster grows in dry and sandy places, like the pile of sandy soil across my right-of-way. This characteristic makes it a soil conservationist by nature. Its roots hold together otherwise erodable soils across Massachusetts and New York, and as far south as Georgia. It grows slowly through the summer. This one appeared in June and leafed out in July. Then suddenly here at the end of September, following a brilliant wave of yellow from its goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) neighbor, these purpish flowers have bloomed. Probably the last flowering of the year before we begin our descent into the inertia of winter. Fall solstice passed yesterday.

"This is what happens," She says as she carefully paints a patina on already painted paneling. "All of the shit comes around and back again." A bus exploded in traffic on a highway outside of Dallas. At least 20 dead. "They have made killing like a game," she says bitterly, exposing her intolerance for United States policies, having suffered at the hands of them in childhood and youth and young adulthood in a South American city. "It mirrors their actions elsewhere." Buses exploding in Texas, car bombs in Bagdag, munitions in Iraq. There are hurricanes bearing down on the Gulf Coast and all eyes are watching. Nature has suddenly become a great metaphor for global cultural frustrations. In history, watersheds are turning points, moment after which everything simply cannot be the same. Stories and then pictures of emaciated Jews being liberated from death camps in the 1940s was one of those moments. The image of a frail blue ball hovering in the vast nothingness of outerspace, was another. Poverty-stricken Americans perishing in southern cities by the thousands may be yet another. Here at the cusp of summer and fall when the balance of day and night is near equal, we have to reflect on the shifts in consciousness potentially underway. Our actions and conscience may become like the showy aster, holding fragile soils in place, making the wild flourish.