I come from a family of flower people -- not the 1960’s, Age of Aquarius kind of flower people (my parents are definitely not the types you’d see in the movie “Woodstock,” dancing naked in fields of daisies.) The flower people in my background were hardworking middle-Americans who grew flowers and sold them: My grandfather and his brothers owned a greenhouse and my Mom remembers driving with my grandpa to weddings, funerals and flower shops in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, making deliveries.
Mom still loves flowers, and her small-town Ohio neighbors have come to expect that each spring I’ll show up and, under exacting guidance from Mom-the-Jobsite-Foreman, plant the many flower beds, hanging baskets and pots that decorate my mother’s yard. Even as I write the words for this post, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mom is sitting with paper and pencil, making a list of how many geraniums, Dusty Millers, and ageratums she’ll need to buy, once the greenhouses put out their spring stock.
This week my own property here in the Pacific Northwest is a veritable Hallmark Card of blooms and blossoms. The ornamental plum is crazy-full of pink blossoms, and the forsythia provides a bright yellow backdrop to the whole scene. I walked around with my camera on a tripod and made some photographs I can share with Mom, because, in our family, it's a truism of nature that the bloom doesn’t fall very far from the tree.
