Tag Archives: flowers

Wanderers Take Root

by

 

ROADSIDE FLOWERS

by Bliss Carman

We are the roadside flowers
straying from garden grounds,
lovers of idle hours,
breakers of ordered bounds.

If only the earth will feed us,
if only the wind be kind,
we blossom for those who need us,
the stragglers left behind.

And lo, the Lord of the Garden,
He makes His sun to rise
and His rain to fall with pardon
on our dusty paradise.

On us He has laid the duty,
the task of the wandering breed,
to better the world with beauty,
wherever the way may lead.

Who shall inquire of the season
or question the wind where it blows?
We blossom and ask no reason.
The Lord of the Garden knows.

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The Baby’s Breath has been blooming for awhile now. A cultivated import into gardens hereabouts two generations ago, it has been borne on the winds to nearby fields and ditches to remind us all that we have to be careful or we’ll upset the local ecosystem with our imported fancies.

The wild sunflowers are in full bloom, too. These native rudbekia plants line our roadsides; as children we called the daisy-like yellow flowers Brown-eyed Susans. But these plants don’t stay in the wild any more than the Baby’s Breath has stayed in the gardens.

When they spring up in a garden where they don’t have to compete with quack grass for moisture, they really thrive. (As you would see if you looked in my untended garden this summer.) They’ll hog what moisture there is, grow over a meter high and produce two dozen sunflowers. The seeds are much-loved by goldfinches, who blend their own bright yellow with that of the flowers as they “harvest” the seeds.

Right now my garden is very golden, as the False Sunflower (heliopsis) is in bloom as well. This is a perennial I planted when we came here, and it doesn’t know its own place, either, but has reseeded here and there in the garden. Unlike the yarrow I also planted, the heliopsis has stayed in the garden; we’ve found patches of yarrow here and there in the lawn and against the garage wall.

This business of keeping everyone in their place — and the weeds out of it all — really takes diligence!