Why is Everyone Bored When I Talk About My Flowers?

When I was a child—I didn’t speak as a child because I was really not speaking to anyone except Yvonne, my best friend—I used to love when the flower arranging contest came around each year.  Yes, it was because I always won, but there’s more to it than that.

Those were the days when my mother would buy frozen cans of orange juice and mix it up for us.  I needed one of those cans for my flower collecting.  I would make a vase out of it; then on the day of the contest, I would collect wildflowers on my way to school and arrange them in the orange juice can.  What heaven.

Sadly, there are no wildflowers on that school walk anymore.  It’s all been developed, even the lumpy field where we used to play softball.

Is there anything more comforting than nature?  Okay, some would say staring at the stars and that used to be the case.  But how can we ever see stars anymore with artificial lighting everywhere blocking our view of the universe.  So, starlight star bright, first star I see tonight?  Not so much anymore.  Although I do remember my vain wish-making.  Ah, youth.

In those long-ago days, I used to wait expectantly for spring. When the snows receded, I would dash down to the woods behind our house and check to see if the skunk cabbage was coming out and where the jack-in-the-pulpits would spring up.  How muddy it was near the brook, as I watched the tadpoles swimming.  I was very lucky.  Behind the house I live in now is a fence.

That hasn’t cut me off from my love of flowers.  The snow drops, the crocus, the trillium, and the tens of bulbs I planted, not deep enough, but, hey, I’m old.  As February turns to March, I check every day to see what might be coming up.  The excitement for me is intense.

Not so much for other people, it seems.  Hmm.

I will make a confession though.  When I bought this house there were two circles on either side of the driveway that held irises. Those lavender ones. I absolutely hated them.  They last for maybe a couple of days and then look like hell.  So I had the lawn guy pull out the bulbs.  Yes, I will admit to not mowing my lawn anymore.  I might need exercise, but mowing isn’t going to be it.

Back to the irises.  I thought they were all gone; but he missed a couple, and they came up again.  And spread!!!  WHY!!!  Well, that’s something to deal with next spring.  But they’re crowding out other plants, although my grape hyacinths are putting up a valiant fight not to be overtaken.

Yes, grape hyacinths, another flower that reseeds itself and spreads deliciously so that now I have whole plots of them of all colors.  Some nestle around my apple trees, the oldest cut down this year by the city before it could even have a last bloom.  How sad is that?

This year, because I was going to be away when the flats of annuals went on sale at the local garden center, I planted seeds, marigold, zinnia and morning glory.  The marigolds are doing very well, the morning glory is climbing up the trellis, the zinnias, poor things might never bloom.  Oh well.

Last fall before the first frost I took in the geraniums and the coleus.  Big mistake with the geraniums.  I’ve put them back out but they’re really flopping all over, blooming but flopping.  However the coleus has migrated to all the pots on my patio table.

Yes, I know.  Most people use their patio table to eat out and enjoy company.  But I much prefer to set all my pots on the table so I can see their glory at all times.  Oh, I have flowers on the deck also.  Just looking at them brightens up my day.

I have a half-moon garden in the back, ringed with hostas.  In spring the daffodils peek out, but mostly it lies fallow.  This is a sad occurrence.  I blame the black-eyed susans.  That garden used to be filled with coneflowers, but then the black-eyed susans came along and kapow.  There went the garden.  They didn’t affect the tiger lilies, but the poor coneflowers were defeated.  Only now, several years later have they started to come back.  I’m watching for the pernicious yellow to rear its beautiful but deadly head.

My bee balm is about over for the year.  That’s another plant that spreads.  I don’t cut it back until fall because I like the fact that the leaves turn silver.  They fight with the mums as they inhabit the same soil.  As long as they both survive, I’m happy.

Has this been boring enough?  I’ve been informed that I really am a rather boring person.  I don’t know what to do about it at this stage in my life.  I sure as hell am not jumping out of an airplane—with parachute—for the first time or getting married to someone fifty years younger.

I take my pleasures where I can, and right now that means tearing myself away from thoughts of flowers and eating lunch.  After which I shall read in bed and take my afternoon nap.  Just an old lady living an old lady’s life.  But you never know what I’m really thinking about.  Can it only be flowers?  Stay tuned.