About a week ago what is left of the natural landscape in Ottawa--and a number of lawns that have been let to run riot--gave over to the annual dandelion pride. Dent de lion. The teeth of a lion bite a place for themselves and parade their yellow banner for a week before exploding into puff balls of parachuting seeds.
But even before the seeds have blown to their new homes, their place on urban hills is taken by ever so slightly more respectable daisies that open most precociously at dawn. Daes eag. Day's eye. A suitable opening for a near Summer's day.
Now these are honest bloomers--not sophisticated with heavy petals like potted mums.
These showboaters of Summer overshadow their fleabane or aster cousins, who compete, blinking their eyelash petals when the sun is done, bundled in a royal mauve or a flirtatious pink.
Also showing now are the heroes of the hedgerow, the bluebells or foxglove from which we have derived the heart medication digitalis
If these draw too much attention to themselves, you can settle for that old prairie companion cow vetch, a more modest story in the same colour.
Yet to make an appearance is the common cornflower, or chicory, the roots of which cowboys roasted to make coffee on the trail. Cow coffee might have been the inspiration for the caffeine free Mormon beverage Postum.
But don't tell them that it, too, is a drug! Seventh Day Adventist Kellogg ran a sanitarium, after all, and a tidy ship, tidy ship at that! There was always more going on at Battle Creek than people suspected, Post Toasties, Corn Flakes, or no corn flakes. The best to you each morning, indeed!
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