… were her favorite flowers, so cheery and dependable in early spring.
I scattered her ashes among daffodils.
Basho (1644-1694) mourned the death of his friend and teacher Tando with a beautiful sad haiku:
© Matsuo Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)
falling to the ground
a flower closer to the root
bidding farewell
Chèvrefeuille presents his own beautiful variation on this sad theme in the CDHK episode
Carpe Diem Weekend-meditation #14 Revise That Haiku
and challenges readers to “revise” Basho’s haiku in the same spirit:
© Chèvrefeuille
tears flow
falling to the ground
autumn leaves
My response honors Tando’s influence on Basho (and hence on countless haiku poets) with imagery like Basho’s but a change in the metaphorical correspondence between the 2 people and some parts of flowering plants. As he weeps, Basho also resolves to carry on.
Elegy for Tando
Flowers fall,
but seeds will ripen.
Some will sprout.
My previous posts about waiting for autumn were not CDHK responses. My response to
Carpe Diem #1227 waiting for autumn
(Aki tikashi, Aki wo matsu)is to update and reblog them. They fit the prompt better than anything else I can offer now.
Soon after the wild daylilies have finished blooming, another flower in my yard turns to prophecy. The pale blue blossoms are long gone, but a few of the leaves on a few of the plants have another calling now. For about a day, they prophesy the next season.
Prophet for a Day
Wild geranium
(just one leaf for just one day)
turns in high summer.
As happens in many years where I live, late August of 2016 was a sneak preview of fall, the year’s best season. Days were still too warm, but more were dry and breezy while fewer were hot and humid. A few cool nights led to chilly mornings, and I suddenly noticed that my garden flag with a picture of phlox was out-of-season. The roadsides have goldenrod and purple loosestrife now.
Virginia creeper is turning, as are some red maples in wet areas. Nearly all the healthy trees are still green, but there is a hint of yellow in many of those greens. The process will slow to a crawl in September; I will spend much of that month grumbling when the weather backslides and thinking “C’mon! C’mon!” when I look at green leaves.
October
Bright sun and cool air;
azure skies and pumpkin pies.
Leaves fall in glory.
Soon after the wild daylilies have finished blooming, another flower in my yard turns to prophecy. The pale blue blossoms are long gone, but a few of the leaves on a few of the plants have another calling now. For about a day, they prophesy the next season.
Prophet for a Day
Wild geranium
(just one leaf for just one day)
turns in high summer.
I saw something on 2016-07-06 that I had never seen before, in about 40 yrs of making daylily bouquets. I saw 3 flowers blooming on 1 stalk. It was on day 3 for a batch of stalks I had cut. (By cutting about as many stalks with mature buds as with open flowers, I get a batch that supports 4 or 5 days of bouquets.) While I see 2 flowers on 1 stalk much less often than just 1, I do see 2 on 1 often enough to take it in stride. Seeing 3 on 1 was a pleasant reminder that there may still be new wonders to be directly experienced, even in the same old yard.
Hope nobody misconstrued the title of this post as a reference to a bizarre kind of group sex.
I like the scattered violets that appeared in my lawn some years ago. In the spring I let the grass get rather high before I mow, so that the violets will have a good chance to set seed. The delay also gives the dandelions a good chance to set seed. Fine.
Would the dandelion have a better rep if we had translated (rather than anglicized) the Old French name? Not likely. Every flower is the same bright yellow, so there is no variation for plant breeders to coax toward white or red and then offer “Snow Ball Lion’s Tooth” or “Fire Ball Lion’s Tooth” in seed catalogs. Any klutz can grow dandelions, so they give gardeners no bragging rights.
Nowadays the French have a derogatory-sounding name for dandelions. Were the royal gardeners frustrated by the plant’s defiance of the oppressive formality of the plantings at Versailles? The Germans have kept the good old phrase “lion’s tooth” (in their own language, of course), as have the Italians and the Spanish. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
When many people see a dandelion, they see a weed. I don’t. I see Löwenzahn, the Wagnerian Heldenblume that thrusts green and gold into the grayest and grimmest of our cityscapes. I see Dent de Lion, the Enlightenment philosophe whose call for liberty and rationality rides the wind.
I do pull weeds; I do not pull dandelions.
