Last-Ditch Attempts, 1

 I've been walking by this concrete-enclosed ditch on the FRC campus for weeks.  I've been keeping an eye on flowers that are still blooming in or near the water whose relatives on nearby dry ground have long since wilted and gone to seed or have been destroyed by mowers, weed eaters, herbicides, and all sorts of other Acts of Man Playing God.  The idea for the theme, Last-Ditch Attempts, has been brewing for days.  Last night it came to a focus, more or less.  I would get up early this morning (which I did) and visit the ditch at the college as well as several other of my favorite ditches around Quincy and photograph plants that refuse to give up.  They and their bug visitors are making last-ditch attempts to stay green, reproduce, grow bigger, and accomplish whatever else they feel driven to do despite the dwindling odds of success.  I started, as always, by giving my neglected front lawn the once-over. 

 This Brown-Eyed Susan or Sunflower is less than 6" tall, and its leaves have grown lots of hairs.  It might even produce a successful crop of seeds.  In most places around town these are being watered and they tend to grow from 3 to 10 feet tall before thinking about producing flowers.  This one, in attempting to survive the lack of watering, has adapted quite well, it seems, and I feel vindicated because I've given a plant an opportunity to practice its survival skills rather than be weakened by domestication.

 The Ox-eye Daisies, non-natives, have already had lots of practice surviving harsh conditions, so they persist at our roadsides under all sorts of conditions.  The one pictured above is representative of a group of a few dozen defunct daisies still hanging on in my yard, and still providing landing pads for interesting bugs.  Most people would have pulled these up or mowed a long time ago, or kept a group watered in a garden separate from the lawn.  I wouldn't trade my summer's observations of these challenged daisies for a trip to Disneyland.

 In another part of my lawn, there's a patch of Bindweed which I prefer to call by its other name, Orchard Morning Glory.  There's really nothing nearby for it to 'bind' so I enjoy watching it send out runners in search of things to climb.  In part two of this story I'll show a photo of Bindweed in another location that is actually binding some other plants.

 I have left two short, 1x6 planks at the edge of my lawn specifically to attract things that like to hide under planks.  Over the course of summer the moist soil underneath provides great hiding places for Earthworms, Pill Bugs, Earwigs, Millipedes, Centipedes, and things whose names I don't know.  As the soil gets drier, one type after another either relocates or digs deeper to a place that stays moist.  I'm not sure how far down that is in my yard, but at Table Mountain it can be 20 feet or more.  Now that my soil is extremely dry and hard, the only critters I am finding underneath the planks are Wolf Spiders.

 The first ditch I visited on my morning outing is the one alongside some farm land on Quincy Junction Road.  For two months now I have been photographing Madia and enjoying its pattern of  shining brightly in the early morning sun and closing up by noon. The plants remained green until recently, and, while the back-lit blossoms (above) are still impressive early in the day, the bodies of the plants have almost completely dried up and turned brown (below). Yet there's still enough of a trickle of nutrients for the flowers to continue their daily cycle.

 After taking some photos of the Madia and several kinds of bushes bearing berries (next post), I moved on to another favorite ditch.  This one is on the west side of Highway 70 just north of the turnoff to Feather River College.  There's still enough water running in that one to keep the Cat-o-Nine-Tails green and healthy-looking, although I must admit I get excited anticipating the drying out of the seed clusters and watching them free their air-borne seeds to the wind.  My kids and I often try to speed up the process a bit by hitting some of them with a stick, or sword fighting with them.

 One type of flower that wilted, turned brown, and produced seeds two months ago in many drier places, is still fresh-looking and bright yellow in some local ditches.  That is the Common Monkeyflower, Mimulus guttata.  In this photo you can see the resemblance of this flower to the Snapdragons growing in the planters in the Safeway parking lot.

 The Hooker's Evening Primrose (below) bloomed at 3 to 4 feet in height in this ditch until recently.  The first batch I photographed was wiped out by Weed Eaters several weeks ago.  The cluster shown below sprung up in its place and bloomed while less than a foot tall.  Definitely a Last-Ditch Attempt.

 Chicory is another of my roadside favorites.  It generally gets 3 to 5 feet tall and sports beautiful blue flowers for most of the summer.  In this case, some plants have sprung up following the weed eaters and, like the Evening Primrose, have started to produce blooms while less than a foot tall.

 The Gum Plant is another late summer beauty that adapts by producing a gummy, aromatic surface that attracts lots of bugs, and has adapted to blooming close to the ground when its parent plants have been mowed.  This one's stickiness has also snagged the seeds of nearby Dandelions, Thistles and Salsify.

 On the east side of this same stretch of road is one of the best Blackberry patches around.  I'm amazed that this 100-yard stretch of vines hasn't yet been stripped of its bounty.  There must be gallons, even bushels, of blackberries ripe for the picking as well as many "green" ones that are actually red.

The Wild Sweet Pea is also one of my favorite hangers-on in late summer.  Thus ends part 1 of my story, and I haven't even reached my planned destination of the ditch at Feather River College (top photo).  I'll post part 2 as soon as I have the energy.  Probably tomorrow.
As a final note, when I chose a title for this story I was well aware that the phrase has a military origin, a last-ditch attempt referring to trying to hold off an enemy that has already managed to cross earlier attempts (ditches) to keep them at bay (which brings another common expression to mind).  When I see these plant and bug survivors of the wars against them, I cheer.