Their orange heads pop up like weeds in those weeks between Flag Day and Fourth of July when we start dipping our toes into summer. Charitably, you could call the color a vibrant shade of setting sun.
I call it vile, the orange of petroleum Cheeto dust sticking to your fingers or that shade the shower floor gets when you forget to clean it.
These are flowers out of Baudelaire. But I know better: they are weeds that I break my back trying to kill. They look pretty, sure, in these precious weeks, but I see the future. They die while summer is just beginning to bloom, leaving us with the better part of July plus August and September with their remnants. Green stalks wilted like hair matted in the humidity. They take over.
I did not choose this for my garden. It is just someone else’s standard of beauty that I have not yet been able to eradicate.
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