The wonder of gardens is what shows up unannounced. I have not seen this yarrow (Achillea millifolium) in my garden before but it is thriving. I always thank the birds for these new plants. Yarrow is a native in the aster family and is characterized by small whitish flowers, a tall stem of fernlike leaves, and a pungent odor.
The inflorescence is produced in a flat-topped capitulum cluster and has 4 to 9 phyllaries which contain 3-8 ray flowers which are ovate to round.
The ferny stem and the flowers are very delicate,
Yarrow
We packed our lives into the back of your truck
and drove two thousand miles
back to the only home you'd ever known.
On the bayou you ate crawfish
and god how I wished I had never become a vegetarian.
Here, whatever you came carrying
fell to the ground like Creole swamp rain.
Uptown you could watch the jazz notes float
from porch swings to sidewalks
of little girls playing jump rope and hopscotch,
to old women skipping rocks
across the gulf of the Mississippi
like heart beats they forgot they had,
while mid-city trombones
wrote love poems in lonely men's ears.
For a year we were gardeners.
"No, Andrea, yarrow doesn't grow here,
imagine a womb full of water,
plant like you would plant a daughter,
name her Iris, Rose, Magnolia, Gardenia."
You could hold the soil between your fingers
and smell gumbo and harmonicas.
Could smell po-boys and cathedrals on the same block.
"What do ya mean, you don't talk to strangers?
Come inside and see a picture of my son,
he raises hell, but he's a good one..."
Iris Rose, Magnolia, Gardenia,
when I heard of Katrina
I thought, "The flowers, save the flowers..."
I never thought for a second
we wouldn't save the people.
Andrea Gibson
From: Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns, pages 11, 12
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