My daughter has many qualities. She has two, however, that make life particularly interesting, especially when they affect one another:

1. She has an incredible gift for verbal communication. She has been talking since 6 months old and has never stopped. But she is one of those “old soul” types, and I am stunned every single day by the brilliance thatx comes out of her mouth.

And

2. A wildly active, incredibly creative imagination.

This makes things extremely fun (usually) but also extremely difficult (think “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, except that this wolf is just realistic enough that it might have actually gotten onto the school playground that day and let her pet it, so that I can’t say 100% that she is making up a story).

This morning, as I changed my son, my daughter serving as my perpetual shadow, gabbing away,

she said something that actually made my ears perk up.

(I do listen to what she says, it is just that it is impossible to actually internalize every single thing that comes out of the mouth of someone who truly never stops talking.)

She said, “Mommy, have you ever heard of dessert peas? They have these little peas and one eye and they are from the desert and they are red. They stay on roots, or something, like these little lines.”

Okay. I was confused. This was one of those things that toed the line of fact and fantasy. And for the record, I purposely wrote “dessert” and then “desert”, as that is how they were described to me.

“Is that really true?” I asked, as I had not, in fact, heard of one eyed dessert peas that grow in the desserts  from roots.

“Yes!” she was really passionate. “It really is!”

“They also are sometimes purple,” she continued.

“Okay. I need for you to really tell me the truth,” I said, as my tactic with her seems to work; I say something like “Is it possible that maybe you are making up a little of the story of what happened or it was in your imagination? Is it possible that maybe you did color a tiny bit on your furniture? You know you can always be honest with me. I will never be mad at you for telling the truth.” If I were to actually accuse her of lying she would a) continue to lie and b) get upset.

I continued, “are there really things called dessert peas from the dessert that are red and purple and have one eye?”

“Okay,” she said with a great inhale and exhale. “I may have actually dreamed the purple part, but the red part is true. I promise.”

The plot thickens.

So because I had a baby to change and a kid to dress for school and a lunch to pack and two breakfasts plus warm milk to make, I wrote down her exact quotes so that I wouldn’t forget and moved on with my morning.

And so, when I had a second to sit during the baby’s nap, I typed “one eye dessert pea” into the search engine on my phone and it came up with a very varied list of responses. Most were recipes for a sweet Vietnamese rice and bean pudding.

Then, the smart search engine asked me if I would like to, instead, try looking up “one eye desert pea”.

And guess what?

Swainsona formosa, one of the best known wildflowers of Australia, is referred to as “Sturt’s Desert Pea”.

And they look like this:

Image gallery via Google Images

So I am very proud of my daughter for learning about this plant–something that I had absolutely no idea about–and retaining the information about it.

But I am also proud of her for being the colorful and inventive method person, almost performer, that she is. If you walk into our house and you have previously played a role play game with her, expect, without a doubt, to be called by your character’s name.

I am proud of her for being open-minded and imaginative;

In her world, there are these crazy one eyed dessert trees that grow in the dessert on roots that look like lines.

And we will work on the “desert” v. “dessert” distinction, but not yet.

Because for now,  Swainsona formosa plants exist,

as do edible plants from arid climates

and I think that we can make room for both.