At this time of year, I walk to the meadow on Peters Hill in the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University every day. It’s too good to miss.
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There’s a path diagonally up through the center of the meadow, quite steep in parts. It’s a good workout to take that route to the top of the hill, the third tallest in the Boston area. From the top, there is a fine view of downtown—even the gold dome of the Massachusetts statehouse—and planes coming and going from Logan Airport down in the harbor.
The first rise of hill, nowhere near the top.
The View from the Top
Sketch from the first year of the meadow from the top of Peters Hill looking over Boston. A quick scribble with a black Pentel Brush pen. Colored pencil added later.
Queen Anne’s Lace, Milkweed, Goldenrod
This hillside near the Arboretum’s crab apple collection used to be cropped and open, with short grass. Then the decision was made not to mow. The project included Arboretum staff planting 2,500 plugs of butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa).
Now, a few years into this experiment, common milkweed and butterfly milkweed are well-established, along with Queen Anne’s Lace, several varieties of goldenrod, vetch, clover, plantain, chicory, ‘butter and eggs’, toadflax, bindweed, yarrow, tansy, dandelion, aster, and numerous grasses.
Resident fauna includes tree swallow, bobolink, redwing blackbird, wild turkey, yellow warbler, robin, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, dragonfly, milkweed beetle, halictid bee, honey bee, cabbage white butterfly, clouded sulphur, Peck’s skipper, the little wood-satyr, the duskywing, common swallowtail, and black swallowtail butterflies. Mammals include rabbits, chipmunks and other rodents, white-tailed deer, and coyotes.
The hillside is mowed each fall, and the debris is not cleared. The seeds settle down and remain for next year.
Each summer, the meadow consists of first-year growth, and saplings do not become established. Its edges are delineated by mowing throughout the summer. The exact parameter of the meadow changes slightly each year, but each year now, it returns.
June 13th, the meadow is beginning to grow.
A quick scribble with an olive green Pentel Brush pen. I like these so much, I buy them by the dozen and always use them for headings/dates in my sketchbook, but sometimes, I sketch the whole page with them. Colored pencil added later.
Two months later, the meadow is in full bloom, but when you only have a few minutes, one Queen Anne’s Lace will do. Olive green Pentel Brush pen. 79° feels like 81°, heading for the 90°s. Queen Anne’s Lace, its skirts gathered up, gets ready to dance.
Even a brief walk to the meadow and the briefest note and quick sketch feels like an expansive break.
Most days I don’t sketch. I look, listen, and marvel, and sometimes take photos.
The large leaves of common milkweed
In late summer and early fall, goldenrod takes over the hillside.
September Meadow Insect Life
Milkweed seedpod with a shy milkweed bug.
Orange means poisonous and not pleasant to eat, whether monarch or beetle.
Milkweed seeds and sap contain the toxic chemical cardiac glycosides. Both monarch butterflies and milkweed bugs feed on the plant and absorb the glycosides, which makes them toxic to predators.
The brilliant orange of the monarch is primarily a warning to predators.
The Writing Spider
But now that September is in full swing, I’ve been on the lookout for a special spider.
Argiope aurantia.
“It’s a Black and Yellow Garden Spider,“ I texted one of my kids last fall. “It’s also known as the Writing Spider, whose Latin name literally means ‘gilded silver-face’”
And if you see one, it is likely September.
“She’s eaten the bee she caught last night,” I texted the next day. “And she is looking a bit bigger.”
What first caught my attention was not the vibrant 3-inch span of the spider, but the dense silvery center of its web, which caught the morning sun amid stalks on the very edge of the meadow.
The early morning sun on the silvery web drew my attention.
Later the same day, the spider had caught and wrapped up a bee. It had been devoured when we came in the morning.
A second Writing Spider close by the first. It moved locations several times and then we couldn’t find it.
Each day, the web was different. The characteristic zigzag looks like writing, leading to the name, The Writing Spider.
E.B. White, in creating his heroine, the spider Charlotte, whose writing saves the pig Wilbur, used another orb weaver, the small nocturnal Barn Spider, as his model for Charlotte.
I think this spider deserves a story.
We visited it every day for a week, and then suddenly its web was empty, an egg sac all that remained. As the fall progressed, the tattered zigzag orb web hung, unrepaired.
I haven’t spotted one yet this fall.
It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, or at least a yellow spider in a field of goldenrod. But I am enjoying looking.
And then, October
The grass dries, seed pods expand, leaves turn. The sky is as blue as ever.
The whole hillside rustles in the breeze, dry and waiting for winter, but the summer insect sound is louder than ever, and remains until the meadow is mowed.
The Last Day of the Meadow
And then, all at once, it is time to mow. Last year, that was October 23rd.
The resident red-tailed hawks wait expectantly in the oaks at the top of the hill. With each turn of the tractor, the habitat shrinks.
We watch, amazed to see the hillside revealed so easily by the sturdy tractor.
The next day, we walk up and over the hill across the stubbly stalks and split milkweed pods; the expanse so unfamiliar, the meadow already a memory.
Winter will turn the slope into a great sledding hill, a crusty rime of ice over all, until melt and warmth return. And next year, the meadow will thrive and grow tall all over again, and we will walk and marvel and look.
Thank you to Horticulturist Brendan Keegan and all the Arboretum staff who oversee the meadow on Peters Hill and nurture this environment so rich with life.
“... log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.””
Links
Directions to Peters Hill
To mow or not to mow: more on Peters Hill meadow, including ideas for exploring a meadow with children; the insects and birds you might find there; a read-aloud by artist Henry Cole of his book, On Meadowview Street.
2,500 milkweed plugs were planted as part of the meadow’s beginning
An overview of the Arnold Arboretum by Daniel Mount