Because of Salvia Greggii

The meeting was over. The sun had set. The sky was dark. There was a coolness in the air. A nearly full moon looked down on the city, and a twin engine propeller plane passed in front of the Big Dipper on its final approach. I got in the car and drove home.

Trudy's wasn't home, but the front door was unlocked, and a light was on in the living room. The boy and the dog looked up as I walked in, the boy with homework in his lap, the dog wagging his tail. Dark Side of the Moon was playing on the stereo.

I've raised him right, I guess, for him to play Pink Floyd while he's doing his biology. In front of him arrayed in three rows on the coffee table were cuttings from flowers and shrubs and trees. We had walked around the yard in the afternoon collecting them for his assignment. He needed fifteen. We barely made it around the corner of the house before we hit the limit.

So his leaf collection was laid out, and one by one he was writing down names and classifying according to shape. He had a book of native plants next to him, and from the names I had given him earlier, he was looking up scientific names. What's the scientific name for Autumn Sage, Dad?

Was he testing me on such an easy one? I think he expected me to go to the computer. I turned to him and quoted genus and species, Salvia Greggii. He grabbed his pencil and quickly wrote it down. Why wasn't that in the book, I wondered, and I went into the study.

You're the greatest, Dad.

The sun had set. It was dark outside. A coolness was in the air. Pink Floyd was playing on the stereo. And a sprig of Salvia Greggii with a crimson blossom on top made me a hero.

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