Let’s talk about milkweed. I choose it today as my tribute to Thanksgiving.
A favorite plant, a favorite metaphor, and a favorite decorating element,
showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa- aka butterfly weed) grows wild here in Northern Utah. Wildflower, or weed? Not sure; I should look it up. I’m actually more in favor of its being a weed (let’s just call it that, then), with the same disposition towards immortality (or at least self perpetuation) that is native to all other weeds. The more the merrier!
The glory of milkweed season is just barely past in Northern Utah, hastened to its finish by a spattering of rain and snowstorms. While I love its elegant (and yes, showy) late spring blooms with their pale, dusty pink umbrels, it is the milkweed gone to seed that has captured my heart and mind.
Kept out of smooth summer fields and straight fall furrows
by the farmer’s careful cultivation, it grows with abandon and grace on the edges of ordinary, leftover places…swamps, fences, roads. In the fall, its fat pods burst open with a super-profusion of glowing, ethereal silk (my favorite part). Backlit by autumn sun, that silk, cupped by the spent pod, is a gift. It is beautiful in the moment, and further proof as I turn toward home. Proof of potential, the power of creation, love. Proof to me especially of the gentleness and focused awareness of God, because milkweed seems to me to be made especially for me. The sight and memory of it reaches and buoys parts of my soul hidden from the world…even from myself.
I used milkweed for my fall decor,
loving how the silk
could look both ghostly for Halloween, and abundant, natural, and harvesty for Thanksgiving. It is messy (oh, yeah). But the mess is worth it, for the effect. A tribute to beauty, blessing, love…to the promise of future goodness, and the memory of its past.
