What I See
There’s a flowerbed in the middle of the tif yard just off the west end of the southern porch. We used to grow tomatoes there. Now it’s home to a batch of schoolhouse flowers, wild onions, a lantana, two turks caps, a Mexican plum, a palmleaf mistflower, and johnson grass. I still class the latter as a weed and dutifully remove it. Yesterday, as I was down on me knees doing just that, I spotted a bloom on one of the turks caps. A little red flower nestled in a cluster of low leaves. My heart sang.
The plant in question came to be there because my arborist son collects seeds of plant and tree specimens he likes and this one looked to have pink blooms. He grew four from the seeds he gathered. The two beneath the big oaks are, indeed, pink. These two are red. Maybe it has to do with how much sun they get. These get a lot. Anyway, I love’em and now they’re starting to bloom. Eventually, the hummingbirds will discover them, and they’ll have a summer’s worth of nectar. It’s a good deal for everyone.
They say it’s the little things that bring you pleasure, and that little bloom did just that, in an instant it unrolled an entire summer of red flowers and hummingirds. I guess that’s why I like my plants. You ta-ta after them, and they do nice things for you like bloom and show you a bright future, in the petals of a small flower. I believe it’s a good deal for everyone.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale