Potato Flowers and Grasshoppers Who Pose. My Garden. A Story

At first I only wanted to photograph the potato flowers. Because you see, you think potatoes and it’s taste that comes to mind. You think of the somewhat boorish, tasty nonetheless, dirt-dwelling potato, but the flowers… A much elegant exponent of a plant that’s part of a mysterious sounding group, the Nightshades.

It has been cloudy for the last few days. Rain came in buckets. Until today, that is. The garden abounds with whooshes and buzzing. Flowers open. The story begins.

What’s next? The resident ladybug crawling up the sunflower hairy stalk, the bees and all those grasshoppers who have a most favorite spot near the carrot bed. They don’t come in small numbers.

I might never keep the weeds under control in here, not with all the rain and sun bursting out every few days. But if you get close, weeds are beautiful. They are delicate and strong at the same time. Resilient, that’s something to be proud of. As a human, too, I mean.

Tragopogons‘ roots, I just recently read, are edible. They taste like oysters. Imagine that, of all things, oysters. Their fluffy heads pretending to be dandelions, but they’re humongous. They truly make fluff look glamorous. That only works for plant heads.

Tomato plants are in bloom too, they’ll be doing that all summer long. The air around them smells like ripe tomatoes, amplified by piercing sun rays. Tricksters.

I pry the bean bushes apart. It’s damp and warm and green in there. A dandelion’s airy head is balding; some of its umbrella seeds took off and now they’re stuck on bean leaves. Nature’s velcro gets you every time. I remember that since I was little and picking crisp yellow beans. Leaves always stuck on me; you gotta know your way…

More weeds, more ladybugs – some of them are males, but what giggles when I tell that to the boys. Mom, that’s so unfair, they say. More yarrow flowers that smell slightly bitter and taste the same but what a good helpful herb if only you can stomach the tea.

I peek behind the side fence and find purple bells that bear a deliciously dancing-in-green-fields kind of name: Campanula. It has a sound to it, it does, it does… Tall and slender, the stems carry goblets for stubborn, skittish butterflies that won’t agree to photographs.

Beets and berries and more weeds, more insects to love them, yellow flowers for all, wild chamomile and a few shepherd’s purse plants, carrying all the hearts I didn’t know I had. A weed some say, but how can one resent a heart-full plant.

Tomorrow the bean flowers will open up; bees and grasshoppers will be there to celebrate. Ants too, and all the trapped dandelion seeds will stay like that, suspended on bean leaf hammocks, until fall comes.

Nothing stays still here. Everything breathes and grows. Eyes stare, assess and delight. Summer.