Flower Gardening and Grandma's House
A phlox plant grows in my flower garden. It blooms pale lavender flowers late in the summer when most other flowers have come and gone. Other than that there is nothing extremely striking or unique about it. It is, in fact, a rather common flower. Yet to me, who loves my flowers almost as much as I love my children, it is a favorite. It came from a start I took from the phlox growing in my grandmother’s garden. We dug the start, put it in a large can, and arranged it carefully in the back of the car for the two hundred mile trip from Grandma’s house to mine.
This past summer my sister
visited me when the phlox were in bloom. I had her close her eyes and smell
some of the blossoms I had arranged in a bouquet on my table.
“What does it remind you of?” I
asked.
Her immediate answer was,
“Grandma’s house.”
I knew it would be.

It this where my love of flowers
was born? Or did it come to me through the genes that passed from my
grandmother to my mother to me?
Grandma lived in her home and
tended her flowers into her nineties. Then it became necessary for her to move
in with my parents and eventually into a rest home. Even there she worried and
fussed about who was taking care of her garden.
The buzzing of a bee near my ear
brings me back to the present, and I continue my gardening chores. My
four-year-old son, Preston, joins me.
“What’s that flower?” he asks.
“Phlox,” I reply.
“It’s pretty,” he says and steps
forward to smell it. “Mmmm,” he begins
even before his nose has come near the flowers. He does not know it but he is
breathing in my childhood memories.
He moves to another flower.
“What’s this flower?”
“Purple coneflower,” I reply. We
have been having this conversation all summer, only the names of the flowers
have changed as the plants have each taken their turn in bloom.
“Can I pick some?” Preston asks.
“Sure,” I reply.
He tugs at the phlox, and I help
him pull off one bunch before his efforts pull over an entire plant. Then he
plucks some asters and black-eyed Susans. He clutches his bouquet in his chubby
hands. “Aren’t the pretty,” he asks.
“They sure are,” I answer.
Preston beams and buries his
nose in the flowers. Watching him, I see that the “genes” which have come to me
from my grandmother are now being passed down to a new generation.
Perfect.
ReplyDeleteLoved this. Reminded me of when I was little and we visited great grandma's house.
ReplyDelete