While the stories are linked, each is a standalone. However, if you’ve missed any and want to read them, you can catch up here.

Time Will Tell

In the fields around my home, you can see mounds of Queen’s Anne Lace. When I was little, I used to love the parsley scent of the leaves smashed between my fingers. It was only later, when I began to study flowers and understand invasives that I learned Queen’s Anne Lace was not native to my countryside but was from Europe—just like my family somewhere back in time. Angie was not pleased when I called us invasives.

“Why’d you go to college to learn things like that?” she asked while I smirked.

Knowledge is power, and sometimes not.

I’m packed, totally, for the coast. I have a tiny cabin that Russ is renting me for an equally tiny sum. It has tiny everything in it. And, I’m okay with that. I’m feeling a bit like Thoreau. I am embracing minimalism.

I snag a blossom of Queen’s Anne Lace while a tiny bee, a sweat bee that I used to call them without checking to see if that’s their name or if that’s just what we grew up calling them, still prizes lovely nectar from the flower.

As I load my bags into my car, I feel a little like an invasive. I’m going to flower far from home, on the coast—I hope. I hope that I will flourish there. I hope I’ll set roots. Like with all newly planted living beings, only time will tell.

I stretch outward as if my roots are seeking settlement.

end

Sascha Darlington