I come from a family of gardeners. When my parents bought a home with a very large backyard my Mother set to work drawing up elaborate plans that looked very much like a set of professional blueprints that homebuilders used back in the old days before computers revolutionized the world.
My Father on the other hand took several pieces of paper and wrote his plans for a garden on them. His didn’t have the detail and attention that my Mother’s elaborate plans had. She sketched a design of the entire backyard, and drew her garden that stretched from one side of the backyard to the other. The entire garden would be placed several feet off of the good-sized patio.
When I watched my parents making plans for their gardens, I asked if I could have one of my own. My parents looked at each other, with the knowing looks of here we go again. My parents already knew that when I tried something, I became bored after a few attempts and then I would discard my new hobby. I didn’t make elaborate plans like my Mother did for her garden. I didn’t make any plans at all. When my Mother asked one sunny spring day if I wanted to go with her to pick out plants for her garden as well as my own, I said, “Okay, I want some really pretty plants, like your garden, Mom.”
We went through the entire nursery with my Mother looking for what seemed like days to me, for just the perfect plants to take home. While my Mother was bending over plants and carefully touching them and inspecting each one for bugs, or some unseen disease, she said, “What kind of plants do you want to plant in your garden?” In my hormonal 12-year-old mind, I figured if they were pretty, anything would do, so I said, “Just as long as they are pretty, doesn’t matter to me.” I went home with two of those plastic containers filled with some zinnias, I was so thrilled. They had a plastic spike telling what they were and how to care for them.
My Mother’s flower- bed plan was designed so that people sitting on the patio could relax and look at the beautiful flowers she had planted. She planted several rose bushes that produced colorful yellow, pink and red petals, and a mixture of snapdragons and zinnias. Sometimes the one rose bush would produce petals so tantalizingly beautiful, that I would ask my Mother if I could cut some of her well guarded flowers and put them in a vase in the house.
The next day, after school I hopped off the bus and ran into the house, ready to plant my flowers in my new garden.
