living eclipses

plant collaborators: osage orange

The Osage Orange is a naturalized tree across the plains. They’re often called “living fences” because early settlers planted them closely and then wove the flexible branches together to create fencerows that could contain cattle and other livestock. Their function as a wind-breaking shelterbelt was, I think, their mightier purpose for the weary hearts of immigrants unfamiliar with the epic expanse of grassland and endless windscapes. Their name is associated with the Osage people, who used the tree’s dense, flexible wood for bows throughout the south-central region and were often traded with many other indigenous nations.

The celestial piecework evokes center-pivot irrigation systems we see across agricultural land, and its tidy border a nod to living fences and the persistent way we, as humans, try to contain and restrain wildness.