Here are just a few of the native wildflowers--ginger, lupine, Canada mayflower, and trillium--we uncovered at Flanders Nature Center yesterday, July 2, while removing invasive plants from the Botany Trail.  The Canada mayflower and trillium have formed seeds, assuring us that life goes on.  Indeed, with air and light, life goes on.

Working on the Botany Trail, it's tempting to want to cover as much ground as possible--removing invasives along the trail itself to show progress.  However, that's not how it goes when you're out there among the native trees and shrubs who will thrive with the right amount of air and light and the absence of competition from soil nutrients.

Rather, marking progress means identifying the native trees or shrubs that are being overwhelmed by Japanese barberry, Japanese bittersweet, burning bush, or multiflora rose.  Seeing that tree or shrub and then removing the invasives around it is the act of restoring the understory.  Restoring the understory is an act of hope.

Asking volunteers to support efforts to restore the environment, it makes more sense to ask an individual who cares about the plant to clear the area around a specific tree or stand of trees than to go on a marathon to clear a certain number of yards.  By doing so, we ask the volunteer to connect with the trees under threat and to make them safe.  By doing so, we get to know our mother.  This is how we thrive.