solanoire

I see them every evening when I go to pull the blind on the side window of my caravan living room. Its frame perfectly frames them, hundreds of white flower heads crowding towards me in the half-light. Each one is a disc, itself composed of a hundred-odd tiny white five-petalled florets, and they seem to me like a miracle, these tall bustling blossoms which appeared all of a sudden this July.

I had to wait until they flowered to confidently identify them – wild carrot – and since the first one began to show its petals, they’ve exploded in number and inflorescence with new ones shooting up or opening almost daily. There are none in the immediate vicinity so they must have come from the native wildflower seed mix I dimly remember scattering in various parts of the garden a couple of years ago. There seems to have been no trace of them until this summer but apparently they flower in their second summer and the first summer grow a basal rosette of leaves which I do vaguely remember noticing last year. They’re a welcome surprise, if a bit bizarre, this lone stand of flowers bristling on the end of the low rise beside my caravan. They’re so high and gangly, they look a touch demented, a cubic metre of feathery flowery madness.

They come into their own in the dusk, their round white umbels like speckled moons floating above the settling darkness, seeming to hold a lucence of their own as the light from the sky seeps away. I stand and gaze at them, entranced, another moon face glowing through the glass. I often end up not closing the blind at all but settling myself down on the sofa beside the window and glancing out at them repeatedly as I write or read, enjoying their floral companionship in the encroaching night.

There’s something compelling about seeing white flowers at night. Once, when I was walking through the New Town in Edinburgh late in the evening, I came upon an arch of white roses woven over one of the gates of the private parks. I assumed there had been a wedding, and was so taken by the image that I carried white roses at my own wedding, in the deep cold of a Canadian winter a few months later.

Eventually the long winter melted, suddenly and rapidly, into summer, and as I struggled with the oppressive heat and blackness of the Montreal evenings, I took great solace in the night flowers. There were many, blooming forth from the tiny profusive gardens that lined the neighbourhood sidewalks, and I found them so sensual, just looking at them was a visual caress. The white ones captured me particularly, their pale blooms seeming to loom at me, almost leer at me, as I’d stroll past on my slow way home from the bar. I’d sometimes trail my fingers against them, the gentle touch of their petals cooling and soothing me as the humid air pressed stickily on my bare arms and calves.

Here, thirteen degrees further north and a few thousand miles east, the summer has been cold and windy and the south-westerly gales that have been battering us for weeks have pushed the long stalks of my carrots over so that they really do loom at me as I approach with my gaze. They lean in to me as I go to the window, and beckon me out, open-handed, into the night.

Lochinver, Assynt, Scotland
16th August 2024