Now, I’m no botanist, but I am aware that a square meter of land in any wilderness has a mega-lot going on in it. Down to the microscopic level (which perhaps is a topic all its own, beyond my scope at present). Aside from the fauna (animal kingdom) and mycelia (mushrooms and other fungi), the flora (vegetable kingdom). Dighomi Meadows, the large area near our apartment on the edge of Tbilisi, is no exception.
Flax? Those blue flowers currently in bloom. The world’s earliest surviving textile sample to date is from this plant, a piece found in a cave near Kutaisi which dates to about 35,000 years ago. Wow, not just a pretty face (This recent portrait of my wife is with local flax, the flower nearest her claiming sharp focus while I let her be slightly softened).
Poppies are currently appearing everywhere too at the moment, their large pure scarlet or smaller pink blossoms standing out with eye-popping intensity. Anna, who runs the Dighomi Meadows NGO, also pointed out wild asparagus, edible straight from picked or cookable too, on our recent garbage cleanup run, as I mentioned in my article last week. Aspens, various evergreen trees, and so much more. The irises I also mentioned last time. There are probably 10 more green leafy things growing right here that my wife knows how to turn into pkhali, boiled veggie paste with crushed walnuts, vinegar and coriander, another Georgian staple.
All part of the local life cycle, feeding each other and eating each other too. Insects consume the vegetation, and in turn are eaten by the small silent bats which we saw flitting about for the first time on our twilight walk today. Woodpeckers rear chicks in the trees; so do many other birds, in various kinds of nests. Water birds make their homes in the reeds and rushes which line the many ponds in this area. Ducks, herons and others. Water mammals too, nutria in the same ponds and river otters in the banks and islands of the Mtkvari. Stick around, make a blind from which to observe (once the fauna are used to it) and life will nonchalantly reveal itself all around you.
The flora depend on various types of soil from which to grow, from sandy to clayey, which we have here, the latter so moist that puddles will form almost wherever you dig. Now, as everything greens up, the riot of existence is in full party mode. Later, like all over Tbilisi and in the warm lowlands of the whole country, summer’s heat will turn much of this to drab yellow or brown, and it’ll quieten down a bit. But for now it’s still been sweater weather here, sometimes; and Ushguli even had snow a couple of days ago as I write this, no great surprise. So the tug o’war between winter and spring is still ongoing, until the latter decisively, greenly wins out, as it always does.
My advice is: get out into the city’s many parks, the Botanical Gardens in Tbilisi’s old city, around Lisi or Turtle Lake, or Tbilisi Sea, and everywhere else while it IS still green. There is so much here to refresh the soul; even if (as is the case in our Meadows) there is garbage mixed in with it. The green and flowers win. Left to their own devices, they will reclaim everything anyway (look what is still being discovered by lidar deep in South America’s jungles, whole cities under the vegetation!). Sometimes even the noise of the city, not to mention the industrialized look of it, can just disappear in the flora. You get more oxygen, and give carbon dioxide back. Everybody wins. Don’t wait.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
