Several months back Sue Myers left this comment for me:
“Lovely visit in your yard and gardens today. You spoke about an aunt who took you around to see her flowers, etc. Both my grandmas, aunts and uncles did the same thing. Always part of visits and I enjoyed it. My parents did the same thing after I moved out, too. Sweet memories you kicked up in my mind today. All the best with your plantings this year. Praying for bountiful harvests for us all. Thank you, Tipper!”
Ever since I read Sue’s comment I’ve been studying it. I have so many memories of my grandmothers, aunts, and of course Granny walking me around their flower gardens.
I’ve always been drawn to flowers, likely because Granny loves them so much. As you might guess, I like the old fashioned sort of flowers like hollyhocks, zinnias, roses, lilies, and bachelor buttons.
I remember being in my Mamaw Marie’s flower garden and having a bumblebee land on my yellow sweater. The image has stayed in my mind all these years. I’ve often wondered if the mesmerizing color of the bee against the sweater is why I’ve never been afraid of bees.
Don Casada has often written about flowers that can be found at old homeplaces. Even though the folks are long since gone, as is any vestige of their homes, the flowers remain.
I know the people who lived deep in the mountains where life was harder than it is for me were surely cheered by the blooms in their yards just as Granny, my aunts, and me are.
Last night’s video: Alex Stewart Portrait of a Pioneer 14.
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I didn’t grow up with any great flower growers & to be honest, I’m not too interested in growing them myself (with a few exceptions). I plant a large patch of sunflowers & tuck zinnias, cosmos, & bachelor buttons in on the ends of veggie rows, but thats about it. I do plant a bunch of flowering herb plants, but not really for the flowers. My mother has a bit of a black thumb & we didn’t grow up any gardens or even house plants. I live in my great grandmother’s house & she must have been quite a gardener, because the yard was filled with lots of flowering shrubs, bleeding hearts, bulbs, etc….My mother ripped them all out & threw them in the farm dump. So when I moved in here, nothing was left. I do have a few memories of my paternal grandma planting petunias & pansies along her hedgerow, but that was about it except for a few hanging baskets of fuschia plants. It is kind of amazing to me that I am such a zealous vegetable/crop gardener, but lack the zeal for flowers. I pretty much only grow what will bring in pollinators or make cut bouquets for sale at my farmstand. We walk around folks’ vegetable gardens more often than flower beds, where I live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iNyHNai-PA
Do you ever plant Rooster Combs? I don’t know if that is the correct name for them but that’s what Mommy called them. They have a velvety look to them, they are blood red and shaped like a roosters comb.
My Pa started raising a vegetable garden every year in 1930 and kept it up until about ’57 or ’57. He always planted some annual flowers around the edges. He said they attracted bees which was good for pollination.
Mama was the flower gardener, though. Even after she was so crippled with arthritis that she could barely use her hands, I’d find her on her hands and knees working her flower beds.
I’m missing walking my yard and enjoying my flowers and blooming plants. Seems here in Texas , last May we went directly to blazing hot 100+ days and here it is the last of August and this severe drought is predicted to last until the fall.
The water situation is dire in central Texas. The rivers and wells are really suffering. My Seven Sisters heirloom roses appear to be dead sticks, but I plan to cut them back in the fall and hope for the best. The green beans never made. To hot. Heirloom New Dawn roses are hanging on by a thread. All my kitchen sink water and a water bucket from the shower goes on my lantana, crepe myrtles, yarrow and my mom’s violets. So…… I particularly appreciate your lovely vegetable gardens and flowers. Reading the lovely reminiscing comments reminds me to not give up. It’s going to rain someday soon.
Donna-I hope you get rain!!
Age and the ravages of Parkinson’s have rung the death knell to my flowers and my vegetable garden. Sad to say, I had the beds covered over with Astroturf!
My Grandmother, Aunts and other ladies always wanted us to go outside and look at their flowers. Most times they would always want to give you “cuttings” of flowers. All my mother’s family had green thumbs but what I remember the most, was my Grandmother’s violets. She grew them in her kitchen, on shelves near a couple of windows. They were beautiful! Well, as a young bride, we were visiting, and she asked me if I would like to have one and I was thrilled. Got it home and within a matter of weeks, the leaves were dying and falling off and it looked terrible. I never told her, but it did not make it, but what a joy it was to visit family and enjoy God’s beauty.
I grew up in a very different world than you did, deep in the city. But, like you, our small yard was like a sweet, green oasis in a land of concrete, with flowers, trees, birds, butterflies & bees everywhere. We didn’t have much money but each year my Momma bought packets of flower seeds (morning glories, zinnias, nasturtiums, hollyhocks, bachelor buttons) which she nurtured to make a lush secret garden for us & for our neighbors. The morning glories covered ever chain linked fence & many telephone poles. September was pure magic.
Every once in a while I run into people from the old neighborhood & they always talk about how much Mommas’ garden meant to them.
Flowers bring such joy. I just know that heaven is full of them.
Mamaw would always take me for walks in her garden. She had lovely heirloom flowers – crinums, peonies, hydrangeas, Althea, horsemint, etc. When I bought my own home, Mamaw let me dig up some of her flowers and plant them in my own yard. I remember her every time I see something blooming in my yard and all the wonderful we walks we had looking at her flowers as the seasons changed.
Mama loved flowers and especially ones she got from her family. She had several she called after the person who gave it to her–the Gladys bush I especially remember. My Aunt Gladys gave it to her. I love the flowers that came to me from Mama or my friends.
I tried adding flowers to my ‘just-veg’ garden and it changed everything. It was beautiful, full of pollinators and my garden was more joy than work. I highly recommend it to everyone! Suggestion: plant varieties that discourage deer and rabbits. Purple allium in the autumn is a sight to see and salvia are welcome from spring through fall as well as pots of mint which don’t have big blooms but deer don’t like the smell. I plant mine near the ends and along un-fenced sides. I have too many to count bumble bees and butterflies and all sorts of other sweet pollinators. Also, suggest a sitting stump or comfortable chair with a drink holder – you will want to sit and look at what beauty you have helped God create in an old sod plot!
My grandma had a line of dahlias in the yard, roses flourished behind them along the rock shelf. Lilacs in the front yard; dill, marigolds, and bearded iris hugged the front porch.
The iris flowers would bloom just in time for Memorial Day. Early in the morning we would walk through the dewed grass and pick a bouquet of yellow and purple iris. We carried them in the parade to place on the graves of the resting soldiers who sacrificed all for us.
My mother loved flowers, too, and anyone that came to visit got a tour of the flowers in her yard. Even after she got Alzheimer’s, she’d tear pictures of flowers from magazines and try to plant them in her flower beds. I remember walking through the yard one day holding her hand while she chatted excitedly about her flowers, then she looked at me and said, “Now, who are you?!” Sad, yet sweet, wonderful memories!
My mother and her mother too, would show you around the yard, pointing out different flowers! I find myself talking about mine, even though I just mainly do container plantings on the porch. Mama told me one time that my Grandmother was out tending her flowers and a man walked by and complemented her on her Four O’clock Bloomers, then his face colored up when he realized what he’d said sounded like he was talking about her underwear!
When my mom passed away one of her sons-in-law said I’ve always heard that every person entering The Pearly Gates will have a special job to do and your mom’s job will surely be working in Heaven’s flower garden. Mom grew what she called scarlet sage that was a real show stopper. Travelers passing through would often stop to take pictures or ask for seeds. That made mom proud as a peacock. Every year, I plant thousands of Zinnia seeds in an area I don’t want to mow. Some years are better than others. This year was not a good year. I started mowing the area in July when I realized the weeds had pretty much taken over the 900,000 flowers. (Someone besides me counted them. That’s how many the mail order company charged me for.)
I too l9ve flowers, the garden is the first place I want to visit.
The women in my family are also “flower walkers” When my maternal grandmother, we called her “Ackey”, (her name was Alaska), began getting unable to plant her flower beds in which she liked to fill with annuals, my mother and I would take her to a greenhouse to get her flowers. Then we’d stop for lunch, and head home to plant Ackey’s flowers. It was always a grand day and such a sweet memory. The rest of the summer, each time I’d visit, she would say, “Now don’t leave before we can walk the yard and look at my flowers!” My momma and her sisters were all the same. They are all gone now, except for my momma. At 93, she is still a prolific gardener. Now I take her to the greenhouses and get her flowers. Daddy tried to take pictures of her flowers with his new cell phone. Unfortunately he had the camera reversed and ended up with quite a few hilarious selfies. At 96, he does pretty much Now my children and grandchildren do Nonnie’s “flower dance”. Time marches on, but thankfully I have many cuttings from my momma’s place which came from her momma’s place. My daughter is now taking from me. I love the synchrony of our flower dance.
I remember my mother, grandmother, and other neighbors having a yard full of flowers. When they would visit one another, they would always be looking at each other’s flowers. They would give each other cuttings from their flowers. Grandmother had something she called a flower pit to keep her potted flowers in during the winter. It was a large deep hole in the ground that had a flat top over it that would swing open or close. Mother also had a house full of violets.
Yes! My grandparents, parents , aunts , uncles , all were always proud of their flower gardens and would show everyone their beauty and identify each one …I find myself doing the same thing and now my son has his own and does the same …
We bought 10 acres back in 1980 in central FL notrth of Orlando. The soil is sand but trees, cactus and treasured endangered animals lived in abundance and some native grasses and scant wild flowers.
When my dad came to visit, we’d walk ourside and I would point them out. He was polite but not impressed. He wanted to see roses and camillas, etc. But, I learned it was just easier to plant in containers rather than the ground for sake of conserving water, improving soil where the need was and keeping the rabbits, gopher tortoises etc from making a meal of them.
The rabbits ate the cactus and by doing so, multipled it. That was discouraging.
A while later, with kids grown, I left a few years to care for my aged aunt, got to grow my herbs, roses, tomatoes etc. until she passed at age 97. When returning home, the once rural area had become suburbs & pastures sprouted fancy houses & garages. Wildlife seems to have disappeared. I have seen 1 gopher out walking. Maybe 2 rabbits. My daughter had put out the bromeliads and they have spread out! Planted pineapple tops but sowing seeds for gardens like I enjoyed as a child in the fertile midwest, that’s not possible here, yet.
I still find myself enjoying the volunteers because to me, it says. “Here I am! I am holding ground. Here. Now. This is where I am meant to be!”
Another beautiful blog….thanks
Especially back in our great- grandparents time or maybe sometime not long before, house paint, either inside or out, was either not commonly available or – more likely – not affordable. Homemade whitewash was one answer. But colorful flowers in the yard was another good way to brighten up a place. And when they came with memories of other times, places and people that was even better.
I’m like you Tipper in liking the old-fashioned flowers, the hardy ones that reseed or regrow from the roots year after year. Too many of the latest, greatest turn out by and by to not be so great and they fade. While they are popular they are more expensive besides.
I live on my grandmother’s home place. A white peony that she planted.still comes back each spring. Grandmother died in 1968 when I was 14 years old and I can remember her telling me when I was younger than that I had better not mess with the blooms. If I had, it would have been Lord have mercy time on my rear end because she wouldn’t have had any on it! I often wish I could go back and relive those times.
I love that you have flowers all around your yard/garden! The garden itself is beautiful but the flowers add a nice touch. It’s like a wonderland to walk all around your house!
I think flowers are God’s most beautiful creation. I love all of them!
Donna. : )