Flowers
I’m a sucker for blooms. Big, small, in between. It makes no difference. I love flowers. I’ve had them this season. Spiderworts, Bluebonnets, Agarita, Eve’s Necklace. I’ve got them. Red Honeysuckle, Wild Onions, Coral Sage, Blackfoot daisies, Gregg’s Mist Flower, Salvia Greggi, Lantana, Indian Blankets. And there are more on the way. Rock Roses, Turks Caps, Crape Myrtles, Bardados Cherries. And that’s only a few of the ones I know by name.
It’s a slow motion movie recorded in my mind. It starts in the spring and runs through fall. Every day I can go outside, walk in the garden, and see something different. Watch the butterflies and the bees and the birds as they feed on the flowers, both the ones I planted and the ones that came on their own. It’s a feast for wild tummies and old eyes. It’s a table that mostly I set, with an eye to a sort of wild madness that might live on even if I were to depart the scene and the garden were to go untended. It would just be.
I don’t know where I developed this habit. I remember no gardens as a child, except one. My great-grandmother. Her front yard was full of flowers. And maybe that’s it. That one passing memory from my youth that said, this is what people do at their homes, grow things, and put beauty into the world. Seems reasonable, because I live next door to the home where that lovely woman gardened, and every once in a while, I see her, hoe in hand and sunbonnet on head, tending her flowers as I tend mine, and I think, “I bet Grannie would love this.”