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I had a doctor's appointment today. My doctor's office is in a little office park – it occurs to me I don't know if places outside the US have office parks? - with a handful of buildings. It also has an empty lot! A marvelous piece of waste land!

This really cheered me up. I love an unused lot! I love waste land! This one is a very classic piece of it, and you can see a wonderful array of pioneer plants doing their work. The ground is hardpacked dirt, sandy and gravelly. Full sun, no shade.

I tried to take a lot of pictures, but it's hard to see the screen when it's bright out so most of them came out blurry or out of focus. Oh, well!

There were a bunch of plants I didn't recognize but others I did. Red clover, rabbit's foot clover, ribwort/narrowleaf plantains, spotted spurge, queen anne's lace, and robin's plantains for example!

There was white clover growing in these interesting little clumps instead of properly spreading outward like it usually does.

Look at this gorgeous first-year mullein! Mullein has a two-year life cycle; the first year it forms these low rosettes and the second year it grows a SUPER tall stalk.

Gorgeous. Mullein leaves are big and soft and very pleasant to the touch.

There was a small smattering of black-eyed susans here and there in the whole lot, but not many. Here's one!

Of course, bordering the waste land was a classic strip of roadside pseudo-forest: sumac, bittersweet, and grape. Sumac is very distinctive even without its lumpy red fruits! They really stand out wherever they are.

Here's a pic with their lumpy red fruits if you're curious; you can use these to dye things.

Here you can sorta see how the trees in the background are being overtaken by grape and bittersweet:

I think these types of vine infestations are beautiful! The way they blanket an area and turn it into a sea of leaves... it's a common sight in these types of roadside waste areas where trees grow.