coneflowers

I've been seeing coneflowers and still love their distinct blue, which isn't really blue.

ChicorLit

Maybe I'm getting better, have turned a corner, reached a tipping point, cliched a cliche. Last week I was chatting with a colleague (Botanist Colleague) about chicory, celebrating its singularly summery and scintillating color. I asked her about it, since I wasn't quite sure how chicory differs from purple coneflower or cornflower, if at all.

Sure enough, the flower I had in mind is chicory, she confirmed for me by consulting some serious-looking textbooks. You see chicory on roadsides a lot at this time of year, just about anywhere in the continental U.S. (As for Europe, I don't know, so chime in readers from around the planet.) It has been used as a substitute for coffee.

So today I made a remark to Botanist Colleague (BC) about chicory, something to the effect that she certainly got it right. Our chicory-referenced dialogue proceeded along these lines, although we bloggeristic Proustians realize how unfaithful and saucy a mistress Ms. Memory can be:

PK: "You see them all over."

BC: "Yeah, you do."

PK: "You were saying they're transitory, lasting for a day?" [like blog posts, I could've added but did not]

BC: "They bloom every day. They wilt real quick."

PK: "Just like me," I quickly and breezily reply in my head, the words clanging around in the cranium like a struck gong.

But I didn't say it! A monumental first!

The elevator doors close.

Saved.

This may be the first instance of what I think they call impulse control in my so-called adult impulsive life.