In Honor Of

three wild neighbors that I haven't seen this year...

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Every season, I see so many wild wonders in our little slice of Maine woods and nearby coastline. I feel like I’m always adding something brand-new to a long list of things I look forward to seeing every year.

But it’s also true that this world is changing, and sometimes those changes carry away some of our very favorite little neighbors. Sometimes, someone is missing. It may be just for a season, and they will be back again next year. But it may be a permanent change. It is simply true in nature, as in life, that you never truly know when that wild moment of connection will be the last 💕

This week, I want to take a moment to remember three lovely wild friends from past summers who were not here this year. I hope I’ll see them again soon!

When we first moved into our Maine home, native Common Evening Primrose grew wild in the fields. It’s a tall, leggy wildflower with sunshine-yellow blossoms emerging from bright pink buds, very pretty waving gracefully in late summer breezes.

But one day, we happened to discover my very favorite thing about Common Evening Primrose. It’s the host plant to an absolutely adorable namesake companion, the Primrose Moth.

Primrose Moths are candy pink and sunshine yellow, with a long list of endearing features. They don’t look very camouflaged when nestled into a blossom - but when the blossoms close over them for the evening, only their yellow wingtips are visible! (Read more from Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Institute.)

When perched on a stem, they look just like an emerging bud, or a spent blossom.

Those eyes!

Those antenna! That silky, furry mane!

I honestly think that the Primrose Moth would make the most fantastic stuffed animal - look how snuggly she looks!

Sadly, though we nurtured many primroses this year, and checked them frequently, I have yet to see a Primrose Moth in our fields. Warm memories and tentative hopes for the future will have to suffice.

I am often struck by the sculptural beauty of forest wildflowers. What are these elegant jewels doing in these shadowy, tangled wilds? Emerging from a jumble of leaf litter, nearly-imperceptible bronze spears open into two smooth orchid-like leaves that lay flat.

Slowly, a single, furry, ferny stem unfurls into the dappled light. And from that stem, a cluster of green blossoms bursts into my life to stop me in my tracks.

I was so surprised to discover these wild lilies. They are absolutely breath-taking, and we carefully adjusted all of our footpaths so as not to trample thoughtless human destruction all over their gracefully expanding colonies.

I watched our thriving colony of Blue Bead Lilies this year, new leaves springing from the forest floor, with great anticipation! They had spread farther and were more healthy than ever! Perhaps this would be the year that I would finally get a Blue Bead Lily portrait that I felt fully captured their unique beauty!

Except, as I kept checking back, no flower stalks emerged. It was as though the healthy leaves had just pressed pause, waiting on the forest floor in a frozen moment as my days sped by around them. What was going on, I wondered?

“It does not do well in heat and will decline when temperatures rise above 75 degrees F.” (North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox)

So, this has been the hottest summer we’ve experienced since moving to Maine, and the first heat wave arrived early. It seems likely that the Blue Bead Lilies got their usual start, and then did indeed press pause as soaring temperatures mounted like a wall around them. So, no summer blossoms…

No autumn berries….

Content with memories, again, and tentative hopes for a better outcome next year…

The sound of springtime!

One of the earliest sounds of a thawing Maine forest, these chirping peeps are so improbable rippling across the forest floor that they just make me giggle every year. The sound is pure joy, that is only multiplied by meeting them in person.

Look how tiny they are! Perched right on a fingertip. And unlike the teeny-toads, who will mature into chonky-toads, Spring Peepers stay tiny. Look how the mosses tower over him!

They are a type of tree-frog, their sticky pads clinging easily to any surface, from tree bark to grass stem to flower petal to fingertip. They have that amazing amphibian anti-freeze system that allows them to become froggy popsicles, nestled into muddy forest pools, through the toughest Maine winters, even refreezing as necessary to accommodate our tumultuous freeze-thaw springs.

*this photo is by my oldest son, who shares my affinity for peepers, and spent a happy afternoon taking this guy’s portrait from every possible angle!🤣*

But this year, the song of the spring peepers was absent from our little forest. I’m not sure why. Changing temperatures? Drought? Predation? They’re so resilient, and with many difficult changes but nothing obviously outside their range of adaptability, it’s hard to settle on a theory.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we just haven’t heard or seen a peeper yet this year. Maybe they’re still out there, having suffered some type of setback in numbers, but on the road to recovery. Or maybe something in our little ecosystem was too much for them, and our local population is gone. Warm memories, tentative hopes. And only time will tell.

in honor of

There are some moments that we can only recognize in hindsight. “And that was the last time anyone ever saw a Dodo. Ah yes, that was the last time anyone ever saw a Passenger Pigeon. And that was the last encounter with a Tasmanian Tiger in the wild.”

At least 21 of these moments were recognized in the US this past year. “On October 16, 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized a rule removing 21 species from the list of species protected under the Endangered Species Act because of extinction.”

Have I already had a moment when I’ve seen the last of one of my wild neighbors here at home? I’m not sure. I won’t be able to say for sure until I’m looking back across a long stretch of maybe-next-seasons, acknowledging that this particular next-season will probably never come.

In the meantime, I look forward to the same wild wonders, year-after-year, to adding new wild wonders to my list, and to taking a moment to honor any one I might be missing, in the hopes that I will see them again one day soon. 💕

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