I set out this morning to see if the bloodroot had opened. I’d noticed leaves and buds curled up near the creek the other day. En route I pass the man who I usually see in his plaid bathrobe taking out the recycling… today in a Canadiens jersey, laying out a tarp to dry on his driveway.
A long-haired Alsatian chases a black squirrel with a brown tail while the dog’s person calls something like Jingles! and a cat in a window looks smug.
There’s a house where daffodils and red tulips bloom—dozens of them—it’s the only place that has more than one or two and, weirder still, they look like they’ve been there for weeks and I wonder how this can be.
Over here a truck delivers a load of sod and topsoil and over there a couple of chairs on a front porch look ready for a mug of tea. Further along, a grease stain in a shape that can’t be overlooked and which I add to my collection.
There are reminders everywhere of December’s ice storm.
And on various curbs, a total of three toilets, one bathtub, two sinks and a countertop.
I notice the hockey net around the corner has been replaced by a basketball hoop and a skipping rope abandoned on a lawn beside a pair of mittens.
There is a thing I don’t recognize.
And a song that I do.
And the Italian man with the garden near the park is walking around his patch of still bare earth, smoking, figuring out where the tomatoes and beans and zucchini will live this year. Rotation is good.
There’s wild ginger.
And tame things.
And then, by the creek, one of my favourite oddly named things…
Matilda Magtree 
How lovely to take this morning stroll with you, Carin. Thank you. Ahh … since I am the Darwinian Gardener, what is the odd name for that last pretty picture?
That last one (to my delight!) is the bloodroot.
Now then. What, exactly, is a Darwinian Gardener??
One who plants, does her best and then leaves things to the survival of the fittest
Well count me in then.
Interesting that you find the name odd. Even when I was a child and told NOT to touch that plant because it would stain my clothes, I thought the name very apt. Bloodroot–for the blood that streams from its stems when picked. What I find odd is the innocent face the flower makes.
Exactly. It’s all come-hither… Who’d ever think it had such power to ruin pedal pushers?
And to be honest, if I ever did know that I’d forgotten it. And it never occurred to me to look it up.
So thank you. Your running-wild childhood pays off again!
You have also just betrayed that you don’t pick wildflowers as I clearly did once upon a long time ago.
You’ve reminded me about the landscape of my childhood, which was a new subdivision across from an orchard and not too far from the beach. And across the canal, in the countryside, where I’d bicycle, there were more orchards. Also streams and tadpoles and wild, foresty bits, but I didn’t much venture there. I wandered about a lot on my own, friends always seemed to choose activities that bored me, and I think I was too scared to go into the foresty bits alone. Mostly I leaned toward patches of soft grass in the shade with a few stolen peaches and a book. So I missed all that wild flower pleasure. I did, however, make jewellery from dandelion stems…
Braiding dandelion stems… I forgot all about that!
And chains! We’d tuck one hollow end into the other, then link the next, etc. Very clever types were able to incorporate the occasional flower.