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| Kerria japonica. Thank you Joan! |
Today, the Kerria bloomed for the first time, reminding me again of the power of flowers and plants to help us remember. This poor Kerria came as a bundle of sticks caked in mud. I'd wanted one for ages, but the only one I could find was from a nursery online and they wanted $25 for a little potted plant. No thank you. I put the word out among my gardening friends that I wanted one, and wouldn't you know it but a short time later my friend Joan called to say that a neighbor was ripping out a whole hedge of them, and would I like one? Sure! She showed up with a bag that looked like a bunch of green twigs caked in mud. We planted them without much hope in a sunny spot in the new garden area on the southern side of the house that we installed this spring, and waited. Leaves appeared, but they still looked like sticks. Now today; one single yellow flower, like a pompom, stuck to the end of one of the twigs. The Kerria has bloomed at last!
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| Sunlight through the leaves of the snowball Viburnum, like stained glass |
Mums for my dad; Kerria, snowball viburnum, Blaze roses for my mom; holly for Aunt Betty; butterflies for Aunt Lucille, because they are such a wonderful Christian symbol of rebirth and renewal.
What will people grow to remember me by, I wonder? (Probably something weedy with thorns!)
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| Butterfly on butterfly bush today in the garden. |
3 comments:
Pipevine Swallowtail on butterfly bush, marvelous capture.
More of my plants have a history or a connection than not. One really neat thing is that I can grow in the garden here things that my mother cherished as pot plants farther north.
I have a garden dedicated to the memory of my mother. In it I grow plants she liked.
Nell Jean, thanks for the ID on the butterfly. That one bush seems to attract so many of the same species!
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