Around the first week of October every year, something magical unfolds. Ceropegia is a tiny little creeper, nondescript for about fifty weeks in a year, one that you could easily pass by if not a trained botanist.
There are a precious few of them here at the base of Laburnum Hill, just three plants as far as one can search but in the forest yonder, there are more. Over the years, I have associated this little creeper in its beauty and simplicity with the Mahatma for they share birth-and-bloom days. And never has this plant been seen in abundance.
Wild boars, I am told by Ananda, the knowledge repository, scoop up the tuber of this plant, as do humans on occasion and, for once, I am dismayed at the thought and hope they - boars and bores - fail, give up and let live-and-bloom. But is there a story to tell here of commensalism between boars and this plant, where the boars dig in (literally) but the plant stays unaffected? A story beneath the earth, the secret life of a plant that will grow no matter what depredation happens? Or one that needs the boar’s excavation skills to thrive?
We don’t know what we don’t know.
And in that distraction of thought, a butterfly comes into view - the Common Silverline, I later learn - resplendent in the warm evening glow, flitting by, pausing briefly on flowers for a last sip before twilight sets in, searching.....
But then, aren't we all?
