It can be easy to begin to fool yourself or even others that you know everything. Sometimes I have to hold back from making an educated assumption about things on the farm when there exists a perfect opportunity to improve and grow. It can be particularly challenging for someone like me who makes part of my living at crafting words and even answers. 

To thwart this, it is important to never be completely comfortable with what you know. Yes, it is fun to walk the woods and point out the plants and critters you’ve become familiar with, but to be truly better, it’s important to be able to spot the things you aren’t so sure about. 

I forced myself to do that this week by taking the time to just snap a photo or two of the things that I see a lot, but don’t fully know about. 

The first and primary trigger for this thinking lately was a small orange flower that grows rather heavily throughout my little woodlot. It’s rather beautiful, albeit small, and has very distinct leaf shapes. I was going to attempt to look it up in an Audubon guide or another plant guide we have at the house, but after I spent far too many hours incorrectly identifying a tree that I mixed up in the dark a few weeks ago, I opted for the more modern approach to identifying this plant. The Google.

Upon a brief review of the options on Google, I determined that it was most likely Impatiens capensis, which is also known as a touch-me-not or orange jewelweed. 

My first question after identifying this new plant was to see if it was harmful in any way. The consensus of the internet seems to be that it is largely harmless to either be consumed or applied topically. 

My follow-up question was whether or not it was good for anything. Considering that I have several acres littered with it, it would be good to know if I should collect anything from it for home use. According to Google’s overview, it is said to help relieve the itching of poison ivy and even athlete’s foot. 

I was curious, so I delved a little deeper. Apparently if you boil the leaves and stems and then cool what remains, you have yourself a natural fungicide. Who knew?

While I was excited to gather this little tidbit, I couldn’t help but feel this came a bit too late for me this year—I suffered through a bout of poison something while clearing multiflora rose from around my field. Coincidentally, more poison wood vines grow in the same area that this jewelweed grows, so I’m curious if my property is trying to help me fight back against its own wild nature. In any case, that’s a rabbit hole I don’t have time to fall down.

Next on the docket for my educational exercises was a pest. I had been looking at my grandmother’s garden and came across a tomato with some damage underneath. While I was looking at it, I saw a small green bug with which I was unfamiliar. Between me and Grandma, we had two thoughts: aphid or squashbug. The squashbugs have been rather heavy this year, following a rapid spike in their population, it seemed, at the end of last season. 

As I got to inspecting the photo, however, I felt the bug lacked some of the color and shape of a typical squashbug and had a distinctly different build than an aphid. This bug had a pointed green body with a few black spots.

Once again referring to the Google, I believe I narrowed it down to a lygus bug, aka the tarnished plant bug. Assuming that identification is correct, lygus bugs are in fact a problem. From my further Google inquiries, I ascertained that they seek out succulent growth—or more specifically new bud and flower production. Therefore since they eat what is essentially the conception of each individual fruit, they are no good for a garden in which you want fruit. 

You can be sure I’ll be looking for some pest control that meets organic standards for these little suckers now that I know they are here as well. Funny how an ounce of curiosity makes more work…

The way out here we have to know a thing or two just to get by. But to really enjoy what we do, and do it better every day, takes the desire to learn and to grow alongside all the things we cultivate on the land. With the right sense of humility, you just might find out those pretty flowers in the backyard are gonna feel real good the next time your toes start itchin’.