156. Flowers

I like flowers. Not floral prints, but real flowers. I spend a great deal of time gardening and I love it. Much of the joy of gardening comes from the flowers. I spend hours pruning rose bushes, fertilizing them and cutting them to bring inside. I plant old wheelbarrows and whiskey barrels full of alyssum, lobelia, pansies and petunias. My vegetable garden is interspersed with sunflowers that attract honey bees and then go to seed and attract birds. Those same flower seeds fall to the ground and become sunflowers themselves the next year. I don’t ever have to replant sunflowers. The same is often true of pansies and alyssum. In fact, some years, in this land of winter, the pansies don’t die at all but continue to slowly bloom if they are in a sheltered place.

Other flowers that I enjoy growing are tulips, daffodils and crocus. The spring is resplendent when those flowers announce the end of winter. Other flowers that require a little less tinkering that I enjoy are lilies and lavender. If you want to lose every care in the world, sit amongst the lavender plants—but be careful because they will be full of bees. The scent of lavender transports you to another world where there are no worries (but, like I said, don’t be deceived or you will get stung) and any of the troubles that you harbor will vanish like the ripples of raindrops on the surface of a still lake.

And then there are peonies and iris. Peonies—I like the blood red ones—grace the garden for only a few days at the end of May around here. Their leafy green shrubbery lasts all summer long but their flowers herald the beginning of that glorious season and disappear with the end of spring. And the iris fall quickly behind the peonies lasting but a little longer and leaving their flat leaved verdancy well into winter. Vincent Van Gogh was also a lover of his and painted many still lifes with iris as the central figure.

Another flower that fades in mid to late spring is the lilac. Those flowers are so popular around here that Spokane has taken the moniker of Lilac City. Of course, I love to hike and observe the many wild flowers. A shrub that grows almost everywhere in Idaho and has given itself to our state as the state flower is the syringa. This is another flowering shrub that transports you to another world with its beautiful fragrance. When syringa fades, ocean spray graces the mountain sides around here. It doesn’t have the heady scent of syringa but it still has the ability to carry you downstream from the Idaho mountains to the Pacific coast in a heartbeat.

While the fireweed is fading its purple pink into the coming onslaught of snow and the golden rod has heralded the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of the fall, the flowers are beginning to fade away and their fruits are ready for harvesting. Huckleberry, elderberry, strawberry and serviceberry are all ripe or finished. Apples are ripening and ready for harvest. Soon we’ll be mulling cider and baking apple pies. But there will still be flowers. I might have to get some dried straw flowers or some of my roses but the variety, while slightly diminished, doesn’t go away. And the seasonal heralds of nature’s bounty and beauty are always just a melted snowflake away. I think what makes me happiest about flowers is their effervescence that sparkles throughout the year. They have sustained me through this year of disease and they will continue to do so. I am, indeed, grateful for flowers.