By Kristy Belaney
Yesterday I took a route home I don’t normally take. As I was
rounding the corner of a particularly overgrown weedy area, something
caught my attention. It was a giant patch of blooming Asclepias syriaca,
swarming with bumblebees, moths and other pollinators working away,
unknowingly doing their good deeds.
I paused, took a moment to gather it all in and smiled. I have lived at this address for nearly ten years and never noticed this simple but beautiful gift just two hundred feet from my front door. Maybe if I had seen them before, I would have thought the flowers were cute or enjoyed the pleasant smell they gave off as I walked by. But that is probably where the admiring would have ended. By the time I got home I would have forgotten all about the not so particularly memorable flower. And what a shame that would have been.
I paused, took a moment to gather it all in and smiled. I have lived at this address for nearly ten years and never noticed this simple but beautiful gift just two hundred feet from my front door. Maybe if I had seen them before, I would have thought the flowers were cute or enjoyed the pleasant smell they gave off as I walked by. But that is probably where the admiring would have ended. By the time I got home I would have forgotten all about the not so particularly memorable flower. And what a shame that would have been.