Where Have All the Flowers Gone


 


The funny thing about flowers is that I never grew flowers until I met my present husband. Before that time, I was totally into growing vegetables, useful things that I could feed my family with. I thought that flowers were for the weak, the rich (who had money for flowers), and not for me. I was the practical one, who canned, and picked, and stewed, and jellied. I'm not sure where that came from, because my Grandmother had a wonderful vegetable garden, but had tons of flowers, which she would allow me to pick to bring into the house. We still had to pick beans, compost the tomatoes, pick off the horn worms etc, but she always had the roses, gladiolas, petunias, hollyhocks, and several others, including mint growing right outside the patio door. I spent a year living with my grandmother when my Dad was overseas, so I got really into the gardening scene.

My best garden was in Nevada. Our back yard was big enough to be a small used car lot, so my ex-husband borrowed a tractor, tilled it up, and we planted corn, beans, melons, tomatoes, squash, and even eggplant (which no one would eat). We did have sunflowers which grew to be over 13 feet tall. We had so many squash-butternut, acorn and spagetti, that we couldn't even give them away. I even grew enough pumpkins for each kid (4) to have their own pumpkin to decorate for Halloween.

But it wasn't until I got remarried, and we got our first house together that I started my adventure into flowers, and now, my kids call me a "plantaholic". I have my veggies in the back of the yard, but I've got flowers everywhere else. I've also tried to tie it together to flowers/plants that I have gotten from other people, not just bought ones. I have althea and cannas from my uncle's house who has passed, day lillies and irises from old homesteads that were out in the middle of nowhere(my husband is an archeologist), and several other plants that came from somewhere, so bring their history with them. We also have a wonderful botanical garden in Atlanta so I can go hang out there whenever I can't get enough flowers and plants at home.

Hope you like this small albumn

Happy Wednesday