i love cattails. i love that they provide us a noise buffer between our very busy metro area lake and our very quiet wooded acre of homestead. i love that the red winged blackbirds announce spring every year, teetering on cattail perches. i love that we walk to the lake through a green cattail tunnel in august. i love that between june and september, cattails have enough furious energy to grow almost 10 feet tall. but mostly i love that cattails are never less than elegant. they are tall and sinuous and slender–the lauren bacall of native emergent vegetation. i have many gifts. i am hard working and versatile and loving and strategic and focused. but i will never be lauren bacall. so it is nice to have her visit my back yard every summer.

over-wintered cattail leaves

turtle lake, saint paul, minnesota