Little White Things

It must be spring. The little white things are blooming.

Every year they’re the first blossoms I see and every year I ask my wife what they’re called, She tells me, and thirty seconds later I forget.

It’s the same thing with the bird feeder. We have big birds with red heads, little birds with a tiny red cap, yellow birds and quite a few brown birds of varying sizes. I am reasonably confident that with time and effort I could learn all their names.

Well, their species names. Whether the flock calls them Lennie, Bert or Myra is none of my business.

The thing is, there may only be so much room in my brain, and I need it for other things. I already have an issue with the theme song from Gilligan’s Island shoving geometry out the door. I’d hate to lose knowing how to start a snowblower because I learned the Latin name for goldfinch.

This is not due to my rapidly aging mind...I’ve always been like this. After we got married, I went to an agricultural college where I had some immensely valuable classes in business law, accounting, and land appraisal. My education trailed off when I started a class in weed identification, including the Latin names.

I’m reasonably confident there was a good reason for that. Probably to learn about which weeds are related, etc., but if I was told the reason, it didn’t register. Instead, I was soon out the door, deciding to learn how to be a farmer by doing many, many things wrong.

And that’s how most of my learning has occurred.

It’s not just me. Other people, good people, have declined to learn proper identification. For instance, there’s this story about two people, who shall remain nameless in case I was supposed to keep this story on the down low. One of these people is very serious about gardening, one of them is less so. The serious gardener was visiting the less intense one. She’d recently moved into a house in the country, the country being France, and it was decided a tour of the garden in the back yard was in order. What the homeowner didn’t share is that she had no idea what was in the back yard garden, she was just enjoying what was planted by the previous owner.

The serious gardener came across a plant she didn’t recognize and asked the name. The response, which had a chance of being brilliant, was “This is France. I don’t know the English names, just the Latin ones.”

So close, but it turns out that one of the characteristics of a serious gardener is that you know the Latin names of flowers.

Busted.

Now, I am all about education, and there are many, many random facts lodged in my noggin that I delight in pulling out when asked, or even when I’m not asked. But my enjoyment of the little white flowers is not lessened by not knowing their name, in Latin or English, and the fact that I can’t identify the birds doesn’t keep me from cherishing their presence outside my office window.

I am confident that some of my readers know what the little white flowers are called, and some of you will be tempted to drop me a line filling me in. Don’t. Just don’t.

Odds are, I won’t be paying attention. I’ll be busy looking at birds and flowers.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olso

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