Baby Blue Eyes: Lesson 2

A little bit of sky
On Mother Earth's warm breast
Draws bees from far and nigh
And satisfies their quest.

Baby-Blue-Eyes up close.

       Baby-Blue-Eyes has several sisters, natives of California. Most of them look like her. Their color is different, but their shape is the same. They have the honey paths, the honey bowls, and the hair screens. They are all loved by the insect world.

       One of the sisters is quite different, but I think you can find her. Instead of growing near the ground, it climbs up and throws itself over bushes. It's stem is square. You can feel the corners. But be careful of your fingers. The stem is covered with little bristles, each ending in a hook and each pointing backward. It has these hooks to hold on to bushes with, but if you will put your hand in its way, it will hook into it. Hand or bush is all the same to Climbing Baby-Eyes, as long as it gets up in the world. It only wishes a support. It is really weak. If you pull your hand away, a long piece of stem comes too.

       The leaves, too, are quite different from those of Baby-Blue-Eyes. They clasp the stem as if they were afraid of being swung so high in the air. They are cut into lobes and each lobe points down to the ground. It does look as if these leaves wished their mother plant would act as the other Baby-Eyes do and cling near Mother Earth.

       The violet corolla is pretty and it brightens the brush-heaps over which the plant throws itself. They say that in the Spanish California days, the young ladies used to wear this Baby-Eyes on their party dresses. Pick some for your big sister the next time she is going to a party. Do you think she will want some a second time? Why?

       Have you read the Californian native people's story of how the Baby-Blue-Eyes came to be? It goes like this:

       Coyote had just made the World.

       Eagle looked over it and saw that it was flat. She said, ''There is no place for me to perch?''

       ''That is easily changed'' said Coyote. He made some little round hills.

        Sniffed Eagle. "Those are only footstools. I want high hills for my perch?"

        "Well, then, Sister Eagle, make better ones to suit yourself," said Coyote.

       "Thank you, I will," answered Eagle.

       She set to work. She dug her claws into the earth and scratched up some mountains. She worked very hard. Some of her feathers fell out as she worked. These feathers stuck in the ground and began to grow.

       The long feathers grew into trees. They became pines and redwoods and other tall trees.

       The pin feathers grew into bushes. They became manzanita and coffee-berry and other bushes.

       The soft down from her breast grew into small plants. It became Baby-Blue-Eyes and Buttercups and Cream Cups and Poppies and all the little flowering plants.

       Is not that a pretty story? Most of the Native's stories of the Nature around us are pretty stories. These people lived out of doors most of the time. They looked carefully at all things around them. They knew about the animals, and they knew about the plants. Some plants they knew were good to eat. Some were good to cure man if he were sick. Some were not good to eat nor good for medicine, but they were beautiful to look at. We need beautiful things as well as useful things. The Native people thought Baby-Blue-Eyes looked like a bit of sky fallen to earth, and they loved it.

       Don't you?

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