Pretty pictures: Road trip / September roadside flowers

The flower pictures in this post are from Saturday, September 12, and were taken either in Fairfield, Iowa, or along the gravel roads between Fairfield and Richland. This was supposed to be an errand-running kind of trip, but both the husband and I lived in the area for substantial parts of our lives, and the places we intended to go were mostly closed, so little erranding was achieved.


However, being unable to do what we came to do, and having gone so far to do it, we tried to make the best of it by driving around the area a bit. For example, we visited the "American Gothic" house in Eldon, IA. You can't go in the house, but you can take pictures of the outside. They also have a small museum full of "American Gothic"-related items. Mostly these are parodies, though there was a tiny bit of stuff in there which might come up if and when I do a Pelargonium x hortorum profile, and they also had a print of a lesser-known Grant Wood painting of a woman with a Sansevieria:


They also have a gift shop (naturally) and a staff of two really bored, sort of aggressively friendly people who will descend on you like locusts if you drive up and talk your ear off with speeches about the house and Grant Wood and the people in the painting (Wood's sister and dentist¹) and how many visitors the center has had since they opened and how long ago that was, and so on and so forth until you just want to get away. They apparently have the whole thing completely memorized, though, so you can't interrupt them; you just have to kind of let the tape run until it's over, and then they'll let you look around.

If you're interested, they also have a prop pitchfork on the premises for anyone who wants to try to recreate the painting. The husband and I did try (without the pitchfork: we felt silly enough as it was), though getting the perspective remotely right is nearly impossible. One of the staffers offered to take our picture, and we let him, but he stood so far away from us that we're barely even visible in the picture: it's like 75% house and 25% us, which I suspect reflects our relative importance in the staffer's eyes. So I advise anyone who's planning to try this to bring your own photographer, ideally someone slightly shorter than whoever is going to be in the picture, and for the love of God have them stand close.

We also drove around a little bit in Ottumwa, IA, (pronounced: uh-TUM-wuh) though even the parts of Ottumwa that don't smell like assorted pig fluids are kind of unpleasant (lots of tattoo parlors, strip clubs, pawn shops, that sort of thing), and the pig-fluid stench made the husband nauseous for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. One feels bad for Ottumwa, and Ottumwans: there are still some people there who are trying very hard to make it pleasant, but they are failing. I saw evidence of gardening, for example, and a few brave souls were trying to operate restaurants downwind of the Cargill Meat Solutions plant (translation: slaughterhouse).² But it's really kind of a lost cause. And no, I didn't take any pictures.³

But anyway. Flowers.

From what I'm able to see from the road, there are exactly five plants blooming right now in East-Central and Southeast Iowa. One of them, Canadian thistle, I didn't get pictures of, because although the flowers are quite lovely, the plants are ugly, and dangerous to stand close to, and distributed unevenly. Another, Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota), I've taken pictures of before, and the few flowers that are left this time of year aren't very pretty, so I didn't feel compelled to do that again.

Which leaves three.

I've posted pictures of goldenrod (Solidago spp.) before, but it's more or less unavoidable out in the country now, so I'm going to again. It's a good thing it doesn't actually cause hay fever (that would be ragweed, which is also blooming now), because it is everyfuckingwhere right now. I mean, I like it, but that just makes me lucky, because you can't get away from it.


Then the asters are beginning to bloom now as well, here and there. My best guess for an ID would be Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, but I don't really know. Some kind of Symphyotrichum would seem likely, in any case.


The real star at the moment, though, are the Heliopsis, though. They've been blooming their little heads off for at least a month already, but like the goldenrod, they are everywhere, and they also manage to be even brighter and more noticeable than the goldenrod.


It's stuff like this that makes me think I must have been an extraordinarily dull and unobservant child: surely if this was going on along the side of the road, I would remember seeing it?


And there are entire fields of the stuff, here and there. All the uncultivated land seems to be claimed by either the Heliopsis or the Solidago right now. Though the Solidago I actually remember seeing, as a kid.


I suppose it could be worse. No doubt there are people who have lived their entire lives in Iowa without yet noticing the Heliopsis.


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¹ They're apparently not meant to be a couple, though everyone interprets the painting that way, which is interesting, considering how the woman is clearly a good thirty years younger than the man. Wood's sister was apparently kind of mortified by this.
² I find the name "Cargill Meat Solutions" darkly hilarious, as it implies the existence, somewhere, of a "Cargill Meat Problems" plant.
³ You're welcome.