The odd thing is that this particular type of oxalis isn't supposed to do well in this climate, and is apt to die during the dry season, but the plants in the bed by the front door have survived many summers here, even though they've gotten very very dry at times. Sometimes it turns brown even when irrigated. But it always has come back to life in the fall, either in the first rains or when it gets irrigated after the weather has become cool. They are a bit like me in that. If I survive at all, I'm going to be much fresher come October, I'm sure.
Sunday Verse
Moreover
by Jack Gilbert
We are given the trees so we can know
what God looks like. And rivers
so we might understand Him. We are allowed
women so we can get into bed with the Lord,
however partial and momentary that is.
The passion, and then we are single again
while the dark goes on. He lived
in the Massachusetts woods for two years.
Went out naked among the summer pines
at midnight when the mood would allow it.
he watched the aspens when the afternoon breeze
was at them. And listened to rain
on the butternut tree near his window.
But when he finally left, they did not care.
The difficult garden he was midwife to
was indifferent. The eight wild birds
he fed through both winters, when the snow
was starving them, forgot him immediately.
And the three women he ate of and entered
utterly then and before, who were his New World
as immensity and landfall, are now only friends
or dead. What we are given is taken away,
but we manage to keep it secretly.
We lose everything, but make harvest
of the consequence it was to us. Memory
builds this kingdom from the fragments
and approximation. We are gleaners who fill
the barn for the winter that comes on.
