I never saw a common thistle until I was maybe 17. They spread from the Marsh by the train tracks all the way dearly to their new "forever home" amongst the milkweed, which even though displaced and dying, was jeweled with jewel beetles, and striped with monarch larvae.
We won't get started with the bees, yes, they were there too. You could catch a jar full of them and use your hand as a lid and before africanization they were so gentle that twenty to a jar wouldn't sting you out of sympathy for your own well respected struggles.
I won't forget them either, even though I never knew their names. It was humility and perplexity abounding when I let them go into the winter breeze.