Cosmos

I’m pretty sure I have the name right this time. This cheery overgrowth of wild colour would’ve been a weed in most other places, but here and now in the wilderness of abandoned gardens, it’s a joy to see.

Interestingly, its seeding habit reminds me of the seed habit of the plant all bush-walkers and probably most farmers love to hate. I’m talking of the Australian weed, Farmers’ Friends.

It only needs one knee high plant to catch on your clothes, and you’re picking clingy seeds off for the next three weeks.

One old farmer I once knew, used to have to spend quite a bit of time picking seeds off his socks, since he nearly always forgot to wear his ‘shock absorbers’.

I’ve forgotten the punchline of the joke or pun this name referred to, but they are the little elasticized “skirts” people wear around their ankles, over their socks and tops of their boots. Let me know why they are called shock absorbers?

The old man, when he’d collected a 1 litre yoghurt container full of Farmers’ Friends seeds would throw them in the stove fire. The seeds hang together like velcro, so its easy to pick them up in one bunch.

However, these are Cosmos seeds heads. But if you know what Farmers Friends look like, you’ll see the likeness.

PS, that’s a shockingly bad photo, so out of focus it’s not funny. That’s one problem with composing a post on the mobile, with the photo merely being edited with the Apple editing software. I don’t like it. Probably I’ll go through the whole rigmarole of emailing the photo to myself, editing it using decent software and re-posting it.