Innumerable species of goldenrods, asters, boneset, snakeroot, and many other natives bloom this time of year. Some people may consider them weeds, but they are essential for late-season pollinators when other flowers are fading.
En masse they are beautiful, though modest, as well as drought-tolerant. They’ll outlast cultivars any day in this heat. Also, they are not allergens. They serve many purposes for wildlife going into fall and winter. If there is a winter, anymore! Consider them your allies in the fight to preserve the natural environment that we depend on for survival.
Possibly unrelated, though maybe not so much, repugs are actually trying to outlaw food vendors and shop-owners from giving out water to unhoused people in this dangerous extended heat wave. Can you imagine the psychopathic hate it takes to treat fellow humans like that?! Even the god they claim to follow in the book they claim is infallible, says, and I quote, (Matt. 25:42-3):
“For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” It’s equating any humans they treated inhumanely to god, and threatening the perpetrators with hell for such cruelty.
I never quote biblical anything these days, but the hypocrisy! Just like repugs are propping up an undead corpse named Mitch to try to get the vile votes they require to eradicate justice and human rights, while they eliminate perfectly qualified and competent people of color from serving or voting, because “DEI”. If dems used a corpse to get a majority vote, repugs would condemn them to communist hell, or voting fraud, or something.
Somehow these two topics are metaphorically related, because I’m a gardener! It’s all related. Humans are not weeds to be torn down or eliminated. There are consequences for heedless, reckless behavior. The perps will pay for what they did to all of us and nature itself, hopefully in a proportionally extreme way.
For illustration, here are natives blooming! 😇
