In accord with its name

The summer is sizzling the lawn.  The short grass has bled its green into the dry earth and has taken on its colour, brown with yellow highlights in its hair from the steady sun.  The longer blades are still green so the lawn is mottled with tufts of grass and suckers of trees, and with the green of wildflowers that have now come into their own.  Clover predominates, trefoil leaves like lace and white flower heads with russet at the roots.  In one corner I have a patch of bright yellow flowers waving in the breeze with deep purple below among the clover.  The purple I know, it is self-heal, such a powerful name for so unprepossessing a plant.  Perhaps previously we would all have know its uses, all have welcomed it as an easy remedy for infections or inflammations and picked it for our wounds and sores.  That knowledge is no longer part of the common fund but is kept in herbalists’ purses.  For us it is just a wildflower, but one I treat with respect because of its heritage. 

And above, the yellow.  How many dandelion-type yellow flowers there are, all glorious in their wild brightness. There are hawkbits and hawksbeards and hawkweeds, not to mention catsears, sow-thistles, nippleworts and various lettuces.  I think mine is the lesser hawkbit.  I have had them here for years and have never bothered finding their name before.  Names make things more intimate, we have been introduced, we have a relationship.  I have also found out the name of the wildflower that colonises all my beds, one I always addressed as ‘number 4’ as it was my fourth worst weed.  It is herb bennet, and now I find I have to treat it more kindly in accord with its name. 

God knows our names.  We are not random people shining bright or transgressing borders.  We are known, we have been introduced, we are ready for relationship.