Ground Cover

All landscapes and their flora are the story they tell. No matter what has transpired, plants arrive as angels, filling a niche, fulfilling a need. You can study it as pioneering species and plant succession, but better yet as an interdependent community, an ecosystem always striving towards health and wholeness. Farmers and gardeners should follow the lead of nature in their human endeavors. Wes Jackson comes to mind for his work at The Land Institute where he promotes perennial polyculture to make agriculture more sustainable and more ecologically healthy.  Plants speak for the soil, which sustains the plants, which sustain the soil, which sustains the plants that also sustain us; we might want to pay attention to the stories a landscape is telling.

That’s a rant that hopefully didn’t send you away from my 99 word flash prompted by Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch this week.

Ground Cover

Though she didn’t know him, she climbed the granite boulder underneath the craggy maple and sat with him looking over the hayfield.

A beautiful quilt he said, the red and orange paintbrush, the blue chicory. She loved how he spoke, but bluntly informed him those were weeds that covered poor soil. Then she blushed; the weeds exposed her family’s poverty, her father’s laziness and ineptitude. This field should be green, not the colors of scars and bruises.

She noted his backpack and tightly rolled sleeping bag. “Don’t go yet,” she instructed him. “I need to get a few things.”

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Carrot Ranch February 8, 2018, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story that includes fireweed. You can use it as the plant, a flower, a metaphor or as the name of someone or something. Go where the prompt leads. Burn bright when you write. Respond by February 13, 2018, to be included in the compilation (published February 14). Rules are here. All writers are welcome!