Friday, June 21, 2013

sweet dreams on stony ground

She gives me many things including the name of our creeping wood sorrel (oxalis corniculata).  We have the regular sort too – but it’s this one I really love.  And now I know its name I love it even more.  Knowing the name and a bit about the nature of something allows you to know it more - you’d hardly call someone a friend if you didn’t call them by their name?  Now I know them I feel I can visit our creeping wood sorrel and see how it is doing, how it feels each day. 


Congregating along the edges and breaks in our paths it acts like a reddish green cushion.  It softens our environment – it hides our cracks by filling them.  It wants to help us forget where we are broken, to soothe our jagged places.  And to punctuate its curves with tiny perfect flowers.  Like air holes punched in a cardboard box – a way to let us breathe in our confinement.  To offer us bright ideas on dull days.  I notice that these flowers close up when there’s no sun.  Tight pinpricks of yellow across the path – just enough colour for us to believe their promise to return. 

A little reading tells me it’s an Old World plant now mostly considered a weed.  It can be eaten and bears the flavour of lemons but can be problematic in large doses.  Low-growing, it appears delicate but is known to be explosive when trying to further its cause.  All this reinforces why we get along - and that it’s sometimes known as Sleeping Beauty is even better.