Pretty Sky Things

White campion (Silene latifolia) is native to most of Europe, Western Asia, and northern Africa, but has naturalized throughout most of the U.S.

I remember now that it was all over where I grew up in Iowa, but I had completely forgotten about its existence until about a year ago.

I still have an old LG flip phone from 2009- my first phone ever. Text messages cost per message, but it wasn’t a big deal because I only had about five contacts on it and rarely texted any of those people anyways.

Anyhoo, last year I was able to get all of my photos off of that phone by sending them via bluetooth to my current one. The photos are of poor quality compared to nowaday’s, but I can still make them out.

I had just one photo of a white campion on my old phone. Until that moment, I had completely forgotten about that flower. The one that’s everywhere around where I grew up. I felt surprisingly powerful emotions when I saw that photo, and I remembered that I used to squish their rounded bases so that the seeds smooshed out. I really liked them in their simplicity and how strange they were compared to all the other flowers around.

When I went back home to visit my family last fall, I took a new photo of this flower (its quality probably still isn’t that great lol):

No, I didn’t squish it this time.

I know more now and understand it’s non-nativity to the U.S., but still I love it. I don’t think it’s doing any harm anyways, right? Am I wrong?

I can’t help but be glad that this flower reemerged into my life.