The Asphodel Meadows

 "Your voice is your identity, if you don't use it you are halfway to Asphodel"

                                                                        Rick Riordan

If every religion had a place for plain ole ordinary people, who were neither good nor bad, not remarkable or noteworthy, not on one side or the other, what would the world be like? 

Asphodelus acaulis  blooming in the Cold Greenhouse

The Greeks had such a place, a crowded plain of utter nuetrality that based on your interpretation of it was either a somewhat hellish reality of everyday monotony, and a robot like existence or it was just a fine place to spend eternity, in a glorious meadow of fragrant flowers, banked by a river that once it's waters were sampled  you would forget everything of your mortal life with it's pain and suffering. It's been said that the traffic to this hell for the routine and ordinary is the most trafficked in the underworld. So much traffic that the famed engineer Daedalus, was conscripted to build highways and bridges to hasten the masses along that line up to enter the meadows after a life of no repute. 

Jane McGary gifted me this wonderful plant and it's a delight to see in bloom

From the Mountains of Algeria and Morrocco the low growing, basal rossettes of Asphodelus acaulis give birth to starry pink flowers, with a prominent dark stripe down the perianth. I only have a small specimen, but I've delighted to see ants swarming the flowers as soon as they are open, and if I don't snap a picture they look to be pollinated and almost instantly the tepals start to curl around and the pedicel lengthens and curves downward to plant the seed if there is any. It seems to have a form of geocarpy like a peanut planting itself after fertilization in this manner.  I hope to find seed on this as I would love to propagate it. It's a plant for dry summers and with our increasingly dry winters, maybe even a spot in the rock garden. 

Note the ants pollinating and the pedicels of flowers curving strongly down toward the soil.

I love the Rick Riordan quote because it's so true, your voice is something you can use as a tool to rise above and be something different. For many of us, it might be all we have but we should use it. I've tried to use this blog to rail against injustice, against facism and to warn of the impending doom of climate change. I don't want to be a fence rider on the way to oridinary, I want to do things that matter and try to achieve better if not excellent in what I do. It probably goes against some maxim of advertising to use your catalog of flowers as a soap box, but if I can do anything about it I'm going to avoid spending forever in the company of the plain and ordinary. 

I want to see more than one flower open at time, but as soon as the ants find it it's over and done.

Many scholars have postulated that the Asphodel Meadows were"invented" to keep militarism alive and well in a culture that was increasingly becoming educated and aware. If we take up arms we might achieve to reach the Elysium, the forever place paradise for heroes and achievers. Instead of a mundane forever after in a place of wonted existence. For whatever reason, they were invented, the Asphodel Meadows seem to me like a dire warning against complacency and normality, and taking the often well laid out path of the most traveled. Something I hope to avoid as I've now been delving into the next chapters of this book of life. Mark Twain said it best "Heaven for the Climate, hell for the Company" 

Playing it safe will get you nowhere. 

It's been foggy in the mornings, bit if it's burned off it has gotten into the high 50's. I think today it's supposed to top 60 when the clouds burn off. Frightening given that it hasn't rained in almost two weeks now. 

Cheers, 

Mark