Creeping Charlie

I posted some photos the other day of various blooming things around the place. Of course, it being spring (finally!), some things we would prefer not to bloom are doing so nonetheless. The ubiquitous dandelions are out and also the Creeping Charlie, which is winding its way across the lawn.

I had not heard of Creeping Charlie before I came to Wisconsin. It was, apparently, once touted as a fast-growing ground  cover. And you can probably guess the rest of the story.  Just do a search online for "Creeping Charlie" and the first things you are offered are sites on how to control, kill and destroy it.

You may know it as ground-ivy, gill-over-the-ground, alehoof, tunhoof, catsfoot, field balm, or run-away-robin. It is a member of the mint family, small and low-growing, which may not be obvious in the photograph here. The general effect is a scattering of tiny blue or violet flowers hugging the ground in your yard. It was once valued for its medicinal purposes, but it is now despised for its aggressive presence in lawns.

The first time I heard of Creeping Charlie was in a poem by the Discalced Carmelite nun and poet, Jessica Powers, whom I was honored to know for a brief time prior to her death in 1988. Today I live a short distance from Mauston where she grew up on a farm in the early part of the last century. She was a noted figure in the Catholic literary movement of the 1930s in this country, before she entered the monastery in Milwaukee in 1942. There she was known as Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit. This photograph was taken in the last months of her life.

One of her poems, written in 1948, is "My heart ran forth."

My heart ran forth on little feet of music
to keep the new commandment.
(O feast and frolic of awakening spring!)
It would beguile the world to be a garden
with seeds of one refrain: My little children,
love one another; so my heart would sing.
But wisdom halted it, out far afield,
asked: did you sow this seed
around your house, or in the neighbor's garden
or any nearby acreage of need?
No? Then it will not grow in outer places.
Love has its proper soil, its native land;
its first roots fasten on the near-at-hand.
Back toward the house from which I deftly fled,
down neighbors' lanes, across my father's barley
my heart brought home its charity. It said:
love is a simple plant like a Creeping Charlie;
once it takes root its talent is to spread.

What I like about the poem is the reminder that love is for those nearby, not just for those far off. We need to let it take root where we are.