SOME OUT-OF-PLACE THINGS

FALSE SPIREA...

...FLOWER HEADS...

...DITTO

SANDHILL CRANE (NICE BIRD, LOUSY PHOTO)

Wednesday,  8:00 AM.  Wind calm earlier but picking up, light with moderate gusts from the WNW.  The sky is cloudy but clearing.  The humidity is down at 80% and the barometer is trending down.  It should be a nice day to work in the garden.  Leslie and Allison returned home to Texas yesterday.  Sure is quiet.

   As we were passing over the Pike's Creek bridge yesterday, just down the road on Hwy. 13, I caught a glimpse of what I at first thought was meadow sweet, Spiraea tomentosa, growing along the stream.  But the flower heads seemed too large.  When I stopped later to take a second look, I saw that it was false spirea, Sorbaria sorbifolia.  The former is a native shrub of wet places, the latter an Asian garden introduction, definitely out of its usual habitat.  I suspect it has been there on the stream bank for a long, long time, probably an introduction of the US Agriculture Dep. to control stream erosion and planted by the CCC boys.  Now, before anyone calls the Plant Police, let me say it looks happy there doing the job it was given to do, and I personally have never seen one escaped into the wild.  It is a very good plant for naturalizing in large backyards, or safely at the back of a large garden.  The Latin genus and species names both refer to its looking somewhat similar to mountain ash, Sorbus, species.

   Also out of place was the sandhill crane we saw yesterday evening along Valley View Road.  I suspect it was out for an evening stroll, picking gravel for its gizzard.  

   Similarly out of place is the current flap over fast food restaurants not "paying a living wage."  When I was fifteen I started working at the corner gas station pumping gas, washing windshields and manning the cash register.  It was the 1950's equivalent of a job at MacDonald's or Burger King.  It paid seventy five cents an hour and I was glad to have it, as I could put two gallons of gas in my 1940 Hudson with an hour's labor.   With two hours work I could buy a malt,  a hamburger and fries at Trudy's drive-in, and with three hours work I could finance a date at the drive-in theater.

   Fast food hourly pay today, even at minimum wage, will buy two gallons of gas, or  the best meal deal, and three hours will finance at least a cheap date. Nothing much has actually changed in more than two generations.  Such jobs were and should always be entry level, learn-to-make-change, put on a smile and come-to-work-on- time job opportunities.  The problem is not that such jobs  don't pay a "living wage," but that we are straight-jacketed in an economy that isn't growing sufficiently to provide enough better jobs for people to work their way up to.