Lord, You have always loved the lilies of the field. I’m sure You, like I, look forward to them every summer — flowers that don’t complain because people call them weeds. They’re not fauna divas that have to be pampered, but bloom like they can’t wait to show off Your glory. OMG, when I grow demanding and fussy like my roses, wave a few of these in front of my nose, okay?
Jesus, thank You for constant rain that has turned our world lush and green. As You know, it’s also helped fill our yard with fuzzy dandelions and deceptively delicate violets. Your spring flowers are so pretty! OMG, why do we get rid of them and instead, plant species whose native habitat is the Amazon River Basin?
#dandelions #violets #HumansMakeNoSense
Image by Hans from Pixabay
Trendy, multicolored foliage is attractive. Sophisticated.
But bunches of leaves don’t excite me. Flowerpots and flower beds should contain flowers.
As a child, I cherished my mother’s roses. Is there such a thing as too much love? Probably, as I nosed them frequently. Mom also created Rose of Sharon ladies for my sister and me. Turning the bell-shaped flowers upside down, she made petal gowns and attached blossoming buds for headdresses. Voila! Ladies at an elegant tea party.
I prefer flowers to pets. They don’t bark or yowl under my window at midnight. They never awaken me at six a.m.
My passion sent me — er, my husband — into our grass-only backyard with his mighty tiller. This sun-fried area already had killed redbuds, lilacs and a rosebush. To console me, Hubby had built an arbor on which we hung pots of geraniums and petunias. Most survived. Sufficient … for a while.
This flower child wanted more. Vision of multicolored loveliness danced through my head.
Hubby wasn’t into visions. He’s all about measurements. “How long do you want this flower bed? How wide? Square? Rectangle?”
“I want an oval.”
If I’d shaped the flower bed, it would have resembled a giant amoeba. Using his trusty tape measure, though, Hubby designed a perfect, 15-foot oval. Then he tackled removing sod.
I ordered bulk seeds. No more skinny packets for this flower child. No more dead, expensive perennials. My oval would teem with thrifty zinnias, cosmos and marigolds that love to sunbathe. They defy weeds. They may even chomp on them at night.
Although five pounds of seeds amounted to, um … a lot.
“Let’s fill the yard with marigolds,” I told Hubby. “You’ll never have to mow again.”
“Sure. If you want to dig out all the sod.”
I withdrew my motion.
Having raked compost and manure (hey, I worked, too), I broadcast seeds throughout my oval, then sowed them in other flower beds. Offered them to friends. Sneaked baggies of seeds into mailboxes at night.
Now, yellow, pink, orange, red, fuchsia and white blossoms dip and wave in a lovely backyard ballet.
Enough flower power for even this flower child.
I haven’t used/given away all my seed. New amoeba-shaped flowerbeds may be in my future.
And if you check your mailbox for baggies, maybe in yours?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What are your favorite summertime flowers?
O Lord, You invested so much sunshine and rain in this first tomato from my garden. You must have thought it was worth it.
Investing aches, pains and Tylenol in pulling these weeds, I wasn’t sure. …
Until I tasted this fruit? vegetable? of our labors.
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay.
OMG, You were right! As usual.
Apartments worked for Hubby and me — until a percussion major moved upstairs. Then, upon expecting our first child, we learned our complex was a drug trafficking center.
We rented a house.
The only upstairs residents were squirrels. They pattered across the roof, but none sold drugs or played xylophones.
We possessed three whole bedrooms and a garage. No more scraping ice off car windows. Hubby and I began to succumb to the American Dream. …
However, the driveway didn’t shovel itself. Our house boasted a real yard — whose grass never stopped growing. Flowers I planted attracted real weeds. We purchased a shovel, mower and garden tools. Lawn chairs. And …
The infinite to-buy list should have warned us about home ownership.
But tired of paying rent, I longed to choose the colors of walls and carpet. Bang nails to hang pictures without asking permission.
So, we built a little ranch in a new addition … where roads hadn’t been completed. Also, water and sewage hadn’t yet been connected to the town’s system. During that inflationary era, the special 12 percent mortgage seemed cheap, compared to an earlier 21.5 percent prime rate.
We brought two newborns to that ranch. Mysterious stains marred my carefully chosen colors. I spent years watering grass and breastfeeding babies. Neither was ever satisfied. I also discovered I wasn’t handy. If I banged a nail into one wall, a gaping hole appeared in the opposite one.
The American Dream?
One other house we owned ate water heaters and softeners. Another featured a pillow-soft porch roof, as well as a toilet that randomly ran over and soaked anyone playing Ping-Pong in the basement.
We occasionally considered living in a grass hut in Bongo Bongo.
Still, Hubby and I have called all three houses “home.”
Home, where our babies took first, shaky steps. Where they learned to watch for traffic as they walked to school. Home, where we took prom and graduation pictures. Home, where they and their children now come for holidays.
Home is the only place where Hubby and I can put feet on the furniture. Where we can blow up and make up. Bake brownies, eating them all without anyone judging.
Our American Dream is no HGTV superstar, but at this address, we can be us.
At home.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What home-owning adventures have you experienced?
O Lord, You know that Hubby and I disagree on which describes our lawn best. He says, Prairie Preservation Plot. I say, Best Bee-Feeder on the Block. OMG, Creator of all green things, will You settle this? What do You think?
O Lord, You made some of us roses and some of us dandelions. If I must be a dandelion and annoy some people, OMG, help me also brighten their day.
This post first appeared on March 16, 2016.
As I walk past our nearby elementary school, I search for the first fuzzy yellow dandelions. Although I want them out of my yard, deep in my grown-up heart, I still like them.
As a six-year-old, I heard God sprinkled dandelions on lawns like manna. Sometimes, He turned them to gold during the night. The financial possibilities made it worth a try.
The gold coin story did not pan out, but I still welcomed dandelions. Softer than my baby brother’s hair, they dotted the gray-brown Indiana landscape, reminding me better than any catechism that God loves color.
I showered my mother with bouquets. She never turned them down.
One evening Mama surprised my siblings and me. We would pick dandelions for supper! I did not realize they were good to eat. Or that our old refrigerator was empty. Mama acted as if we were going on a picnic.
“These look good.” She bent and nipped off leaves.
Grown-ups rarely made sense. “Aren’t we going to eat the flowers?”
“No. Some people make wine with them, but we’re eating just the greens.”
“Can’t we make wine?”
Mama’s eyebrows rose. “Probably not a good idea.”
My pastor father’s congregation might not take kindly to a bootleg wine-making operation in the church basement.
My seven-year-old brother grabbed the big greens first.
“Thank you.” Mama shook dirt from our offerings. “But little ones are best.”
Ha! My spindly greens topped his!
I asked, “What do cooked dandelions taste like?”
“Spinach.”
I’d never eaten spinach. But on TV, Popeye’s spinach helped him clobber the bad guys!
Maybe dandelions possessed the same magic. I insisted on a big bowl for supper. Muscles would pop out on my skinny arms. I would teach Kevin, the mouthy kid across the alley, some manners!
I took my first bite.
Maybe we should have made wine.
Though I gulped several spoonfuls, I didn’t hear Popeye’s happy music. My arms still looked like plucked chicken wings. Maybe if the dandelions had come from a can instead of the churchyard, the spell might have worked.
Decades later, dandelion greens, no longer a dubious alternative to going hungry, are chopped, pickled and curried in hundreds of international recipes.
I take home the fresh, green pile I’ve gathered. When I find the right recipe, I’ll dine on four-star fare for lunch. My personal skeptic insists I’ll be eating weeds. Ignoring her, I search the Internet for recipes.
Who knows? Chopped in my repent-after-the-holidays salad, dandelions might make me as skinny as Olive Oyl.
Fat chance.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do you have a favorite dandelion recipe?
O Lord, thank You for zinnias, which I plant every year because they add flower fireworks to my yard; rarely have to be fed or watered; and finally, OMG, thank You for making them tall enough to hide my almost-September garden from the neighbors.
Many people suffer from cabin fever during winter, when slippery sidewalks keep them inside. Instead, I suffer from summer fever. When sizzling sidewalks threaten to fry me, I hibernate inside.
Soon, though, the six-year-old in me has to play outdoors. One evening, when sidewalks and temperatures had cooled to bearable, I considered two summer fever cures: a Moose Tracks sundae or a wildflower bouquet.
Because stern bathroom scales had issued a nasty final warning, the noncaloric remedy won. Too early for fireflies, but also too early for a mosquito assault — I hoped, since I’d neglected using stinky repellent — I headed for a nearby field.
Reaching the pasture, I forgot about insects. A blizzard had arrived in summer! Drifts of Queen Anne’s lace, like thousands of giant snowflakes, covered the meadow.
I felt cooler already.
A poem by Mary Leslie Newton lilted through my mind: “Queen Anne, Queen Anne, has washed her lace/ (She chose a summer’s day) …”
No teacher had assigned the poem. I’d memorized it as a fourth grader simply because I loved it.
A skinny little girl in baggy shorts, I explored sweltering, but magical, Indiana meadows with an enchanting lady wearing a crown. Queen Anne didn’t sweat as she gathered her exquisite laces dried in pasture grasses, laces that, according to legend, had won the tatting competition she’d initiated with her ladies-in-waiting.
As a grown-up, though, I made the mistake of researching Queen Anne’s lace online. Gasp! Some states included it on “noxious weed” lists.
Insult Queen Anne? How dare they!
Instead of the aristocratic name, they called it “wild carrot” and “bird’s nest” — even “chigger weed”!
Now, I not only sweated, I itched.
Queen Anne’s lace also resembled young hogweed, a plant that made poison ivy seem like a botanical best buddy. My favorite wildflower also resembled hemlock, the poison that killed Socrates.
Not the kind of magic I liked.
Not a cure for summer fever.
Too late, I examined my “snowflake’” stems.
Whew! No purple dots that identify both hemlock and hogweed.
The hairy stems of genuine Queen Anne’s lace didn’t reflect her elegance, but they reassured me. I could return to my fairy-tale world without a qualm — occasionally good for a grown-up. Back to the magic of Queen Anne, who never sweat or itched. Back to picking snowflakes that wouldn’t melt when I arranged them in a crystal vase, admiring the wintry effect against a blue wall.
Returning with my bouquet, I mused that Queen Anne’s cure for summer fever — imagination — had worked well.
Did the noncaloric remedy top the ice cream cure?
Um … kid or adult, I’d have to plead the Fifth.
Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your cure for summer fever?