Steadily a cold season moon waxes toward full,
nightly climbing a bare-limbed horizon,
when suddenly a red maple, lashed with fresh flowers,
signals spring’s arrival upon winter’s final round.
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.
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March 8, 2012
June 2, 2010
How we see it is how we know it.
Don’t like it hanging around? “Creeping Charlie.”
Rather impair it somehow? “Gill-over-the-ground” sounds fairly soused already.
Maybe want to impersonally efface it altogether. “Ground ivy” is a good start.
Really, if noticed at all, the plant (or weed, as you like) is usually mowed before flowering … only a few kitten-paw leaves left apparent. “Cat’s foot.”
But along Little Crum Creek, this faintly aromatic daughter of the mint family is growing a foot high in the untrammeled shade, suddenly surprising a passer-by with its long stand of blue and lavender lobed beauty in humbly numbered clusters. “Hedgemaids.”