Plants + Care

Miscanthus moments

7 Comments
Just stop with me for a moment. The wind is blowing my neighbour’s grasses. Miscanthus or maiden grass.
Sometimes we need to hurry to appointments. Sometimes, we need to stand and watch the wind toss the maidens’ tresses.
I think Robert Frost wrote a poem like that. About birches, weighed down by ice:

So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

Watch with me as the wind curls, this way and that, the cumulus of the grasses’ seed heads.
Sometimes it’s good to pay attention to a single thing, to get your fill of it.
There’s plenty of time for rushing, later.

Helen

Helen Battersby is a gardener, a writer, a garden speaker, and a power-walker, not always in that order!

7 comments

  3. VP, I set myself a task last year to start to understand grasses. I'm not anywhere finished yet, but I'm much better than I was.

    Jim, that's how they appeared to me, too. Thanks for your kind words.

  4. They are gorgeous grasses and I miss them. I've replaced them all with native grasses~which are lovely, but, no storm clouds. gail

  6. I love these grasses but I wish I wasn't so allergic, especially when wind blows through them. Your photography, by the way, really captures their texture beautifully.

    Are you familiar with "A Blade of Grass" by Brian Patten? It's a lovely poem you'd appreciate.

  7. Gail, I'm lucky to be able to walk past this long line of grasses on my way to… just about everywhere. They change with the seasons but, alas, you're right, they are not native.

    Tatyana, Thank you!

    Hanna, Until now, I was unfamiliar with Brian Patten's poem, A Blade of Grass. Thank you, it's lovely. I can't repost it, but here's a link for anyone interested in reading it (you'll have to cut and paste it into your browswer):

    http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=5923

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