The first daisies…Townsendia

Easter daisy (Townsendia hookeri)

There are people who claim they don’t like daisies…even they have been known to coo over the first easter daisies (Townsendia); those tiny treasures that are often the first native wildflowers to bloom across the plains and intermountains West.  The picture here was taken last year, but the townsendias in my garden should be open by week’s end, and I am sure there are some blooming somewhere near Denver on the piedmont. Some years you can even find them in February!

This post, however, isn’t really about townsendias: it’s about the Western sensibility. March is a trying month; the landscape in Colorado is scarred and gray and sere. As a child I would often go to California for spring break to visit relatives, and the shock of the full blush of Mediterranean spring compared to our late winter dreariness was something that propelled me into horticulture. It took years for me to realize that the Mediterranean summer is the equivalent of steppe winter; that’s when California is brown and gray. But how much longer it took to learn to love the grays and browns and golds, the eternal neutral colors of our quiet seasons.

Antonio Machado (1875-1939)

But it took a Spanish poet to teach me to truly see the steppe landscape: Antonio Machado is often considered one of the greatest modern Spanish poets. I think he is my favorite; the landscape he describes seems to be almost as much Colorado as his beloved Castilian hills. One of my favorite of his poems begins with a description of this time of year; if you know some Spanish, do read it out loud – the music of his words is amazing. I include my English translation immediately afterwards. You can almost hear the steppe breeze blowing through his sibilants.

Campos de Soria [Fields of Soria] (first stanza only: it’s worth checking out the rest of it too!)

Es la tierra de Soria árida y fría.
Por las colinas y las sierras calvas,
verdes pradillos, cerros cenicientos,
la primavera pasa
dejando entre las hierbas olorosas
sus diminutas margaritas blancas.

[ Translation:  The land of Soria is dry and cold. Over the hills and the bald ridges, green little meadows and ashen bluffs, spring passes,  leaving behind (among the fragrant herbs) her diminutive white daisies.]

(This poem always makes me think of Townsendia! How did that clever Spaniard divine our Colorado spring so well?)