Minuet
This is bitter root, also known by locals as “rock rose.” It’s probably one of the prettiest flowers in the South Okanagan, a drought-tolerant succulent that produces an incredible flower from what often appears to be barren, dry land. The roots were used by local First Nations as a food source, and were traded with other bands, often for dried salmon.
This is a poem my nana wrote, comparing bitter root flowers to dancers, performing a “minuet” on an old hardwood floor.
Minuet
As primly gay
As sweet old-fashioned ladies
In ruffled skirts — hooped dancing skirts
Of pink and frilly white –
The rock roses grow
Over the long brown flats.
As daintily
And prettily they stand
As if they paused a moment
In the minuet,
On an old hardwood floor
Of long ago,
Wrap’t in the music
Held with a note of the violin.
Only the wind,
Whistling clear through the pines
And soft and low in the sage
Is their music now.