Wild White Indigo

Thinking about blog post topics a few days ago (before this strange flurry of activity!) I thought: chickens, recipe/garden, beauty.

I’ve been walking around in beauty with a poem line in my head for it seems like three weeks: “When the natural world draws near…”

I’m starting to love June more than any other month. Maybe I should be worried about climate change, because clearly our beautiful Junes without late frosts or days of wind, warm and wet, reflect a significant warming trend.

But I can’t worry too much, because I’m too busy looking at everything.
Because a large turkey just came around the corner of the house in full view of my spot on the porch.
Because the mama duck and her seven ducklings are cutting a path in the grass that would make Emily Dickinson’s heart leap.
Because at night on my way to shut the chicken coup I can see a light green tree frog jumping out of my path. And it’s the only thing I can see.
Because of the exquisite flowers of growth on each branch of the white pine.
Because for the first time I saw a swallowtail butterfly– and knew exactly what it was.
Then saw another trapped in the greenhouse. Unphotographable.
Because of the pheasant standing right square in the middle of the commons.
Because of the turtle’s slow movement to the upper pond.
Because of the early light show of fireflies. (So many!)
Because of the sand hill cranes, with their child, walking through the prairie.
Because the natural world is drawing near and drawing near…

My husband has been speaking in poetry. Seriously. He uses this language about trees and plant communities and even machines and there’s wonder in his voice.

The prairie is coming into early bloom. Spiderwort and Alexander sunflowers and lupine– most of the lupine has already put out its fuzzy pods.

There’s exactly one spray of purple cone flowers, and everything else seems poised to burst open.

And there is wild white indigo. There is wild white indigo. There is wild. white. indigo.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it in our prairie, or anywhere, yet I’ve been watering two trays, 144 cells (though about half have germinated), of wild white indigo for months. And then I saw it, out there, something new, and in a place where the prairie is most in danger of being overgrown by grass and thistle…

It has purple stalks that sweep out, and the flowers take their time opening up each stalk, and then in the end they stick their seed pods like a tongue right out of the mouth of the flower.

Because of the greenhouse and Jeff I’m much more attuned to seed pods.

I don’t want to complicate things, this joy I’m feeling lately, this wild awake-ness to the natural world. But I did recognize it a month ago and not name it, then I did name it when I heard a former soldier in Iraq talking about PTSG. That’s PTS-Grow, kind of a different manifestation of post-trauma neuro-response. I’ve been hesitant to talk about it, because on the radio program it sounded like the professionals are just trying to say “not everyone gets suicidal after trauma” and describe what that is about. And “they” sound like cliche machines: living in the present, aware of the gift of life, appreciate what’s important.

I can’t hope to express how different it sounded to my ears, what this guy was expressing. I wasn’t really listening to the radio and when he started talking I perked right up. He was being very concrete about very small appreciations. Openness and awakeness to the world around you in all its particularity and all its splendor. Simplicity in the experience. It’s a state of being I’ve never had before, and I know it is because of the cancer– and more specifically the remission. But anything I could say about it, except to sing its simplicity and splendor, would reduce it.

I got word that my CA-125 cancer marker is still very low on June 9. So I’m not saying it was a kind of post-test euphoria. I had plenty of “scanxiety.” And I’ve been crabby, and stressed, and overwhelmed. That is not what this is. I just wish you could have seen that swallowtail butterfly, and tasted that salmon, and seen that tree frog jump.