The maple moon

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.

.

.

.

 

Hedgemaids

Glechoma hederacea.

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.”