Lupines

I tried for years to grow lupines (or lupins or bluebonnets) in one of my garden beds. I chose a sunny spot with moist, well-drained soil which I read they preferred, but they weren’t happy there. One or two of them would come back in the spring, but they were sad spindly things and would collapse within a few weeks. Finally, fed up, I pulled them out and tossed them into my wild flower field where most of my failed botanical experiments go to die.

Except they didn’t die. In fact, the next spring a couple of  plants took root – they spread by seed – ­and shot up 3 feet in the air, their stalks covered in soft deep blue flowers. This, despite the rocky and dry terrain. The next year, several more had taken hold.  This, without any of the recommended deadheading and fertilizer. The lupines have spread across the entire field since – strong and upright – a small, seemingly unstoppable army, dressed in parade blue. The bees and butterflies love them and, at night, the fireflies drift above their gentle spires. They’ve found their place in life — despite all my best intentions.

Lupins

Seamus Heaney

They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing.
In waiting. Unavailable. But there
For sure. Sure and unbending.
Rose-fingered dawn’s and navy midnight’s flower.

Seed packets to begin with, pink and azure,
Sifting lightness and small jittery promise:
Lupin spires, erotics of the future,
Lip-brush of the blue and earth’s deep purchase.

O pastel turrets, pods and tapering stalks
That stood their ground for all our summer wending
And even when they blanched would never balk.
And none of this surpassed our understanding.