My interest in flowers did not start when I was a child. Although my mom had indoor plants and some flowers growing outside, it didn’t seem to influence me much. I do remember beautiful window boxes filled with flowers outside the large picture window in front of our house– pretty to look at from the inside as well as the outside. I must have been influenced by that. I have had flower boxes on my decks for 40+ years.
I remember my mother’s purple clematis (probably a wonderful, old-fashion Jackmanli) on the side of our house on McKinley Street, along with some other flowers.
There may have been a small garden plot in the back corner of my parent’s yard, but I don’t remember the kinds of flowers growing there. I did not have to weed flowers, but I did have to weed around the Poplar trees that lined our back yard.
My mother did plant a lilac bush and I took a small section from her bush and planted it at our house in Burnsville. When we moved from Burnsville, I took a section from that bush and planted it in our yard here in Northfield. It’s still growing and blooming after 27+ years.
I do remember, as a child, picking some tulips from a neighbor’s garden to bring home to my mom…then I had to turn right around and go apologize to Dorothy for not asking permission to cut some of her flowers. Whoops.
Recently a prompt from a writing session led me to thinking about when my interest in flowers began. I remembered giving a friend an eight-pack of starter begonias as a housewarming gift. I have no idea why I picked begonias or how they would grow …but when I went back to her house later that summer there was pot on her front porch, blooming with beautiful begonias…the ones I had given her earlier that spring. I had no idea they would grow and fill out so much! This was back in high school. I’ve learned a lot since then.
My interest and knowledge grew when we moved into a new house with a vacant yard, almost twenty-eight years ago. As I mentioned, I have always had flower boxes to fill with colorful annuals, so we included that into our deck plans, but I created a few flower gardens, too, and have been playing in the dirt ever since.
And now I love flowers…tending to them, admiring them in gardens all over the world, and taking pictures of them…
(These photos were taken in my yard at different times and years.)