A wonderful color combination in the gardens of Lacock Abby. I love the silvery Eryngium slowly turning blue combined with the pink on gray stems. I think it is a Sea Holly, and I should try to grow it here in the South. It should do fine if planted in sandy soil. I know it can take the heat, but I am not sure about the humidity. There is something poetic about this plant that I always found attractive: vulnerable in spite of all its spikiness, a tender soul hiding within thorny little stars giving away its underlying fear to be hurt.
Our fantasy can help us with hard and unpleasant times in childhood. When I was five years old my mother died. I remember playing later for hours in a fantasy world I had created in a corner on the floor of my lonely small room. On a gray linoleum tile I had placed a little plastic monkey, a palm tree made out of wiry material with fuzzy stuff around it, like pipe cleaners, and a stuffed giraffe inhabited the island in the sea. I arranged and rearranged the island dwellers, sent them on many adventures, but in the end they were always safe and sound on their protected gray island tile. When I was eight my new step mother told me to pick that "stuff" from the floor "where it does not belong." She could not understand my need for my fantasy island. I put it away, and put it up again the next day, she complained again and on it went. I was not spiteful. I simply could not part from my best friends. They were the last I saw from my bed before the lights went out, and they were the first to greet me in the morning. How could I put them away? They were not "stuff" cluttering the floor and possibly prone to catch dust bunnies, they were my sanity on that island in the huge ocean that had turned my ship and caused me almost drown. I barely kept my head above water, and seeing my pals on their island kept my focus and gave me hope in the rough sea while I was slowly learning to tackle the weaves. Going under, not being able to breath, ready to give up and drown, when the waves popped my had up again at the last moment, just enough to catch enough breath to continue the fight with the next wave pulling me under. Just envisioning my friends in the darkness was comforting. In the eyes of my stepmother I could have cleaned up after playing. I could not conceive her inability to recognize the beauty and sanctity of gray linoleum island. Was it despair and anguish that I felt when told time and again to get rid of "that stuff"? I remember the tears when my father finally talked to me about cleaning up, I think he sensed my irrational despair because his voice is soft and soothing in my memory. I could keep my island.
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