Health Center Campus

     Continuing to take my dad to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania health campus for treatments, I enjoyed the abundant beauties and colors of the campus's natural landscaping in the strips of soil between parking lots on September 20, 2016.  The brilliant leaf colors of planted trees, the lovely flowers, tall, beige grasses, pretty butterflies and lively small birds in those natural gardens reflect autumn and must be inspiring and up-lifting to staff people and patients alike, making those gardens invaluable.
     The yellow flowers of goldenrods and the tiny, white blossoms of a kind of aster, the small, pale-lavender flowers of another species and the large, deep-purple blooms of New England asters are almost everywhere in the health campus landscaping.  Aster blossoms attract a wide variety of pretty, active butterflies and bees that sip nectar from them.  Some of the butterflies that visit aster flowers are cabbage whites, common sulphers, red admirals, buckeyes, frittilaries, a few kinds of skippers, monarchs and pearl crescents.  In fact, I saw three big, striking, orange and black monarchs on one large, bushy aster plant loaded with deep-purple blooms.  They were filling up on nectar before continuing their migrations south to wooded mountains in central Mexico.  The pretty, little pearl crescent butterflies are common on asters of all kinds because their caterpillars consume aster leaves and stems before pupating into butterflies.
     I also saw several honey bees and bumble bees on aster flowers.  But don't worry about them because they are more interested in sipping nectar from the blooms than bothering people.
     Since these gardens are a bit lower than the black top, they collect the parking lot's rain water runoff, making the soil moist most of the time.  Trees that thrive in damp ground were planted in those parking lot strips of soil, including black gums, red maples and river birches, all of which had some colored leaves on September 20.  The gums and maples get red foliage while the birches have yellow leaves.  Those trees, though still young and small, already add much color and beauty to the health campus parking lots and make them resemble fall.
     A few patches of tall, beige grasses with seed heads, here and there amid the parking lots, are each about a quarter of an acre in size.  Those grasses lend to the look of autumn and provide shelter and food, in the forms of stems and seeds, for wildlife.  Although I didn't see any in the forty minutes I studied this landscaping, cottontail rabbits and field mice could be living at the base of those grasses. However, I did see some individuals each of American goldfinches and house finches, and a pair of song sparrows, feeding on grass seeds while swaying on the grasses' seed heads.  I also saw a few mourning doves walking on the black top and mulch around plants while they ate seeds from grass and other plants.
     And there are a couple stands each of cattails and phragmites in moist soil.  Their seed heads are quite decorative wherever they may be. 
     All landscaping should be more natural with native trees, shrubbery, grasses and flowering plants.  The beauties of nature in those plantings, and the wildlife they attract, will inspire and uplift many a human soul.