3/31/2013

Mom's Flowers

Mom at Boyce-Thompson - 2005
Mom’s been growing flowers in the backyard since the 1950’s.  She has slowed down a lot in the last two or three years, but she hasn't quit.

I can remember our many trips back to Indiana and Missouri to see my grandmother and my aunts… and during which they spent many hours wandering around their yards and flower beds and gardens looking at this, looking at that, cutting this, cutting that.  Coming home, we always had trunk-loads of paper sacks and other containers with stuff Mom was trying to keep alive long enough to get it home and into the dirt here.  Some of the stuff made it and thrived and some of it didn't, but not for lack of trying.  Arizona’s soil and climate is good for some things, but not for others.

Sweet Pea
We were driving home in June, 1968 and as we were cruising along on a Colorado highway somewhere in the valley over between Poncha Springs and Del Norte along US285, she spied a lilac bush growing and blooming up by a small ranch house.  She pulled off, grabbed her cutting tool and went to knock on the front door. Not receiving an answer, she didn't think those homeowners would mind too much her having just one little piece of their shrub (or maybe two...) and she clipped off some cuttings to see if she could get them to grow around here...  alas, lilacs are one of the things that will NOT grow in the Arizona desert. Up north in the higher country, yes, but here in the Sonoran Desert heat an emphatic no-go despite Mom's attentive ministrations and plaintiff exhortations.

Christmas Stuff?
Heading south again on that highway that day I could almost feel the hot breath of the Colorado State Horticultural Law Enforcement and Plant Theft Patrol (the CSHLEPTP, or just say "schleptip") on the back of our necks as we sped away from the scene of the crime.

So I was looking around the backyard this afternoon in the great late-afternoon-springtime light and I grabbed my camera to take some photos of some of the stuff she’s growing.  I noticed that the rose bush she and I planted on New Year’s didn't leaf out, so I guess that will be yanked out and taken back to the nursery for a refund, if she ever gets around to it.  I think the prettiest ones are the bright red carnations - at least I think that's what they are. (No room for that photo.)

Iris
There are lots of other things growing out there... as you can see. Her favorites were always her Iris's.  The past few years, they haven't bloomed in the abundant quantities of years past -- but there is this one out there today, a royal purple one. We don't know why they are not as prolific as in years past -- perhaps the soil needs something. Or maybe her bulbs are just too old.

Good news for me… along with all of the flowers, she’s also got cabbage out there, Swiss Chard, lettuce, beets, peas… probably green onions…  I can’t say the flowers aren't real pretty, but I’m partial to stuff I can EAT, you know? And I do NOT eat flowers. But vegetables aren’t as photogenic, are they?

Roses
These photos are all of stuff Mom's got going in the back yard right now -- all of it obtained legally I assure you.  It’s just that she cannot outrun the fuzz as well as she used to, so she gave up on that life of interstate landscape crime and sneaking around other people's backyards, clippers in hand…

April 17, 2013