Backyard altar
This is my backyard altar. Granted, it doesn't look like much. But it didn't take much to build. Nothing really. I just let it be, might have added a little soil when it was first starting out. Put a little white flag on a metal stick to let the lawn guys know not to weed-eat it. I don't sacrifice anyone or anything on it. Just the opposite. On days when it's not raining, I'll stand in front of the altar watching the activity. This altar is a life giver, a shelter, a place for work and maybe just to hang out.
The flower is not much as flowers go. You're not going to impress a love interest by gathering a bouquet. The "Audubon Field Guide to Florida" describes the flower as "white rays around yellow disk." Called Common Beggarticks or Spanish needle or Monkey's lice, a member of the aster family. It's a native wildflower but also considered a weed because it reproduces so prolifically. Because it produces a seed that will stick to clothing or an animal's fur some gardeners consider it a pest and various gardening magazines will list what herbicides to use to kill it. But beggarticks also attract all kind of pollinators, especially honeybees. Beggarticks flower year around and are (thankfully) ubiquitous.
When a few shoots of the plant first appeared in my small yard in front of the air conditioner unit, I notice it attracted a couple of honeybees. Didn't give it much thought and let the lawn service guys cut it down when it got too tall and bushy. The plant can crowd out most any other plant and for a while I worried the plant would impede air flow to the air conditioner unit. But the more I stood and watched the honeybees come and go, the less concern I had for a mechanical instrument and more I wanted to do my small part to save the bees. So now I stand in front of the beggartick altar watching and pay homage.
(Look closely, upper middle slightly right, for a bee.)
Though I'm most proud of being able to welcome honeybees to my yard, there are other bees, though much smaller, that help pollinate. There are some 315 species of bees in Florida, 29 of which are endemic to the state. I'm sure some of them visit the beggarticks, also, along with butterflies (160 species in the state, another 200 types that migrate thru the state); and paper wasps (22 species) and dragonflies (100 species). Don't know if the dragonflies pollinate, maybe they just hang out on a flower then take flight to catch a meal midair. Dragonflies help keep the mosquito and midge populations under control.
I know very little of what goes on in and around the altar. I really don't need to know that much. The insects let me be and I watch them and give thanks. Makes me feel part of the universe.