It will be no secret to any of you who know Shauna and me that we are
lovers of nature. While out in Banff those many years ago, we grew to appreciate
not only the wild animals, but also the flora. I took many hundreds of
pictures of wildflowers while out there (I know, I know, get a life!) and I
still to this day marvel at their unique beauty and diversity.
My mom really jump started my appreciation of flowers, and I guess she
turned me into a flower lover. I doubt there are very many people out there who
would say they hate flowers, but my
mother, without actually trying to do so, enlightened me about so many
beautiful things. It was probably the artist in her. At our summer home on Lake
Erie she always planted a big flower garden, and spent hours tending to it all
summer long. As a young kid, this seemed to me like a big waste of time, but
Mom, a very busy and active lady, enjoyed her hours weeding and tending to her
garden. Perhaps it was her meditation, her opportunity to momentarily set aside
her undeniable role as the chief cook and bottle washer of our hectic household.
She always planted petunias and snap dragons in the center bed at the end of
our driveway, and in the crescent shaped border beds of our back yard, she planted
zinnias, tuberous begonias, marigolds, and various border flowers like alyssum,
and impatients. There were always pansies around the shrubs that dotted the
property, potted geraniums on both sides of our doorstep, and various flowers
in flower boxes on either side of the porch entrance to the house. While the
house was an unspectacular beach cottage, which has been in our family now for
four generations, the flower gardens were the thing about that beach house that
made it special to me.
I never really thought about this much until later in life, as we
started to travel out west to hike in the mountains. I remember discovering lady
slipper orchids growing wild along a glacial lake, and marveling at their
spectacular design. The mountain wildflowers in general were wonderful. My particular
favorite was indian paintbrush, which sprung up in red, pink, and white everywhere
in the mountains in the spring. I have never seen it up here in Muskoka,
although I’m told it does grows here in the east. When we first built this home
in Katrine, I scattered wildflower seeds around the property, but figured
nothing would take. Now, lining our long driveway is a rainbow of wildflowers,
including foxglove and some really beautiful orchid-like blooms. Every year on
our hill down to the water we have an explosion of multi-colored lupins, which
seem to take over the property in late spring.
Like an old song, or a photograph, flowers have become a mnemonic
trigger for me. As I stumble somewhat cluelessly through the latter half of my
life, I pay more attention to things which I ignored in my ill-spent youth.
While I am not an avid gardener, I do get it now. I understand why people find
pleasure in it. Our good friend Deirdre came up recently and planted our vegetable
garden for us. I putter around in it daily and haven’t killed anything (yet). While
I do have a brown thumb in general, I have figured out how to germinate and
grow zinnias. Every summer, starting a few years ago, I’ve had zinnias,
geraniums, and snap dragons growing in our garden.
The family beach house is up for sale now, and the flower beds are bare.
I know it would improve the “curb appeal” of the house to plant the flower
garden Mom used to create, but sadly I’m not there to tend to it. I suppose flowers were
just one of the many ways Mom transformed our house into a home, and I miss her
every time I think of the beautiful life she provided for her family. This year’s zinnias
are at least a month away from blooming, and like all beautiful things, they
will come and go. What remains after the bloom are the memories. I think Mom
would get a kick out of knowing that the little boy, who had no patience with
her weeding and gardening, has now taken a bit of a liking to it himself. And
he’s still planting the same flowers she planted.
"Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got til it's gone ..." Joni Mitchell
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No comments:
Post a Comment