It’s a hot still day in late spring. And the long cool fog grass tugs at me, tempting my indolent soul to sit amongst the cats’ tails that stretch for acres to the dam; and watch what breeze there is brush across a sea of shimmering soft lilac. At the water’s edge, it raises a whirly wind of dust before bursting into a cascade of diamond glints.
A lone fly, a big blowy, the fist of an army of billions, buzzes dutifully around my head then lands on the scab on my knee. I watch as he unravels his party-whistle tongue to take a lick. Then I brush him off; dismissive as an emperor. I pluck a long stem of fog grass straining its sweet succulent stalk between my teeth then smoke it like the finest Cuban.
The ground below the grass is a little damp, and the thick black soil is pockmarked with minute volcanoes of dirt from a borer beetle. I brush a Gullivian hand of destruction across the tiny mounds then stretch out in the long grass resting my head on a stone. I’m hidden below the line of the cats’ tails as I stare up at a lone white cloud that’s high, so very high, as high as I am low, just beneath the jet stream, going nowhere.
I imagine the snake that must be in this long grass somewhere. He’s a tiger. I know it. I see him slithering through the long fronds of grass; his little blue-red forked tongue slipping in and out testing the air temperature. If he bites me I’ll die. I’ll become all this: the warmth, the cool, the damp, the breeze, the cloud, the beetle, the whirly wind, the shimmering soft lilac, dust, and diamond glints. I still my heart in preparation. I can’t wait for his kiss- the dutiful buzzing of the blowy returns.
I was trying to think of a few other edible grasses. Mature rye grass was OK, but the young shoots were noxious; then, and you might remember this, there was a tiny 4 pettaled purple flower that had an edible seed pod. If you got it just after the flower had wilted it was quite delicious. I was wondering if it wasn’t a clover flower, but I think their flower is a kind of white ball like thing.
I loved eating grasses. In early summer green wild oat stems and in late summer the dried brown ones. Not sure of the purple flowers, but there were some other winter flowers that had a strong ascerbic bite that I quite enjoyed. Also the hearts of Bankisa flowers had a little green bit that was like bush chewing gum.
If we were feeding out, I occasionally tried the oats. I thought they were pretty good. I could definitely see what the sheep were getting out of it. Almas John of course would call that dining out.
Just to add. Tiger snakes are the scariest of all snakes in my mind. They’re aggressive bastards that wallow in cold wet places. Refuse to get out of your way and if you stumble on them, they bite hard and many times. They’re deadly, but not because the venom is especially toxic, but rather because of the volume of the stuff they’ll spit in you.
