White Wood Aster

It's still hot and dry, but, soon enough, the heat wave will break, and we'll start thinking about putting on another layer. As if I needed another reminder besides the thermometer and the hunt for the winter clothes boxes that hold the flannel shirts, the natural world has already started to display a number of hints that presage the impending weather change. First among them is the appearance of the Wood Asters that are springing up along the roadways, gardens, and forest paths. I'm really a fan of Eurybia divaricata—just about all of the plants formerly lumped together in the genus Aster have been reassigned to new genera, thanks to the DNA police, who now regard true asters as Old World plants—but the Wood variation on the theme can be rather invasive in the garden, so we're trying to keep it mostly in its natural place, where, I have to say, it looks like the handsomest of harbingers.