One
plant,
Shasta
Daisy, owns
such easy beauty—
belies it's enduring nature.
Needs no coddling; infiltrates, sprouts boldly year on year.
Tall, erect, flaunts pure white petals around a golden center; resists hungry
insects.
Wizard of plants, Luther Burbank, absorbed fifteen years to make the purest
white color he loved; breeding, crossing, combining four— perfection.
Bend down— look: brilliant white petals, neon yellow center in a spiral nautilus
whorl, all on a stout green stalk. How many petals? A perfect thirty four? She
loves me, she loves me not—count for yourself. Maybe average.
The
enduring
Shasta daisy—
Easy to grow,
Invasively spreads in the
garden.
With little or no encouragement
it will take
over whole plots. Standing tall,
flaunting a pure white flower;
nothing eats it.
Luther Burbank took some
fifteen years getting the purest
white color he loved by old
fashioned genetic engineering
of four species.
Look closely at the flower's
gorgeous, yellow center. See
the perfect whorl. Count the
petals. For my flowers I often
find thirty four. Could Luther
have counted or would he have
cared? Fibonacci—biology.
The First Methodist Church,
with its bold wooden steeple,
burnt to the ground in 1914,
for preaching prohibition.
The good folks of Sebastopol
weren’t having any of that.
Today the Apple Blossom
Parade marches past
the rebuilt church, past
the Masonic Temple, past
Martha’s Mexican restaurant,
with its soup bowl Margaritas,
past Old Main Street Tavern,
overflowing with biker patrons,
and Jasper O’ Farrell’s,
past The Powerhouse Brewery,
The Greenhouse, and G.T.O’s,
with its bottomless Bloody Marys.
As the entire town, marching bands
and all, spill into Ivy’s Park
for a two day party, pixilated music,
and four dollar beers to support
Analy Union High School.
No wonder Luther Burbank
and Charles Schulz
called Sebastopol their home.
And The First Methodist Church,
now made of stone,
the only quiet place in town.
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