A Look at the Eye Catching

One would think that living in a house for almost their whole life would lend itself to noticing the details, the fact that there are fifteen stairs from one landing to the next or that there's eight air conditioning vents downstairs. These are all things I've noticed and taken into account while rooted in my home for the last thirteen years. Even with the limited amount of time I spent in my back yard,(On account of all the bugs, and my phobia of bugs) I couldn't help but notice all of the details. The two knot holes on the right side of the deck and the bleeding heart flowers nestled behind the honeysuckle. I saw it all. Or so I thought. Not everything is always so eye catching.

There's a portion of my yard, quite a large one actually, that has climbing ivy growing on it. I say that lightly, it's a bit more like a cascading wall of ominous green that guards the far corner of the yard. The leaves march out like a small army off to war, cladding the trees in impenetrable armor and nobly staking out the rest of the yard. I always feared this section, my childlike imagination had no words to describe the horror that could lurk under a fog of vines like that, and I had no intention of finding out.

Armored Trees

 

The Cascading Ivy

 

As though my lack of interest in it were a cloaking spell, I ceased to see the looming shadow of undergrowth. It was a hulking mass with a lulling sense about it, nothing to ever catch my eye. That was, until I was parading around my yard one day after school, notebook in hand. My dad stood at his barbecue and watched me curiously wafting between bushes and trees. Out of curiousity he struck up a conversation about it:

Dad: "What is it you're looking for?"

Me: "I'm not looking for anything, I'm just looking."

Dad: "But, at what? What are you seeing?"

Me: "I'm trying to learn something new about all of these things that I've seen before just by observing them."

Dad: "Like what?"

Me: "Like.....I never knew baby's breath grew in ivy."

Dad: "That's because it doesn't"

Me: "Well then what's that?"

This came with a gesture at the ivy ridden tree in the picture above, and the culprit in question--this:

Ivy Blooms

 

I promptly sketched them with a myriad of questions in mind and went inside to research the first quality of the green behemoth that had caught my attention in years. Turns out that this is how English ivy, the invasive species common in most of North America, flowers. These little sprouts are pollinated by bees and other insects and typically spring up sparsely every fall. In spring, these umbrella like plumes form hard, dark blue berries that birds will eat and drop elsewhere. Although these berries are technically poisonous, it's really the seed in the inner shell that is dangerous, and that often gets discarded before any digestion occurs (Moore). With two seasons for pollination a year and an invasive personality, it's no wonder this ivy is everywhere; it's undoubtedly been spreading since before we moved in. And just to think, in thirteen years, I never once noticed it.

 

Isn't it fascinating how the things right in front of our faces are the last ones we see? Like our perception has been warped. We look so hard to find every rock and leaf, the divinity of every detail, but in the chaos of the minute, we can easily miss the object altogether. Maybe if we didn't always telescope in on the microscopic eye catching details, we'd see whole waterfalls of foliage hiding in our sights. It's possible that the things we see could become more eye catching than that which we have to search for. It's possible we've been ignoring some of the greatest beauty in our lives out of fear that's been so long seeded we forgot we had it. Maybe it's time to let go and embrace the obvious unseen.

 

 

Work Cited

Moore, Sarah. "Does Ivy Bloom?" SFGATE: Home Guides. N.p. n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.