'Smart Snapdragons'

Smartweed does not look like a snapdragon. Smartweed grows in disturbed ground and wet margins and places where something used to be and has been interrupted. Its flower spikes are small, precise, pink or white, clustered. A snapdragon is a drama queen — theatrical, bilateral, opening its jaw when you squeeze it, beloved of children and cutting gardens and florists with opinions. They have nothing to do with each other taxonomically.

But here, against the green resin wall of the Maiden collection, the white and pink smartweed has arranged itself into something that looks exactly like a row of tiny snapdragons in a garden that knows what it is doing. The name is both accurate and a joke, in the way the best names are. They are smart. They are snapdragons. It turned out to be true.

For the one who becomes what she insists on being.