“The Flowers of summer”

By

Gerry Niskern

Everyone knows that simple flowers bloom as gorgeous around a small home as they do around a mansion. Home gardeners are reaching back to flowers prized by their grandmothers.  I’m beginning to see flowers from yesteryear growing in many front yards around the valley.

There is an enchantment to old-fashioned flowers. They were the blossoms that the pioneers brought with them across the country. Flowers were the inspiration for poetry, symbols for political parties, and bouquets for lovers. More importantly, they were the symbols of home.

Lately I’ve sighted stands of colossal sunflowers; each huge flower with a crown of gold nodding slightly as it follows the sun to the west. After dark, the giants turn their allegiance to the east again, waiting for another sunrise. A friend of mine raises unique sunflowers and they were the theme of her daughter’s wedding.

Passing by Hollyhocks recently was a pleasant surprise. They always remind me of playing with the bell shaped blossoms as a little girl. We spent endless summer hours making dresses for our dolls from their petals.

When I was a child back in West Virginia the women carried canning jars full of flowers to the alter of our little country church all summer. There were daises, queen’s lace, violets and lilacs with heart shaped leaves of dark green and the rich perfume of pink, white and purple blossoms. Years later, I picked sprays of purple from a lilac bush in the front yard of an elderly friend’s little house on East Cherry Lynn. She brought a tiny bush from Michigan as a bride.  Lucky for me, no one told her lilacs wouldn’t grow here in Phoenix, Arizona.

One Phoenix resident who grew up in Tennessee remembers the iris of her mother’s garden and raises them in her garden here too. Best of all, she tells me, after moving to Phoenix was finding fig trees growing in the Valley of the Sun just as they did in Tennessee.

Another friend from a dusty West Texas town recalls helping his mother lace string up and down the back of their drab farm house to hold the climbing Morning Glories she planted every year. He can’t grow the prohibited vines here now, but Morning Glories will always mean home to him.

Beds of marigolds remind another Phoenix woman of her wedding on a farm in Maryland. Queen Annes Lace from the meadow in large vases, surrounded the wedding couple.  That old favorite blooms here in the spring.

Beautiful roses are blooming everywhere.  I’ll confess I have a special place in my heart for roses. Not the hot house variety, but roses offered fresh and fragrant in the arms of a neighbor from her garden.

When I was a child I knew a lady whose farmhouse was at the end of a long country road. She had no electricity or running water, but the old house was surrounded by many large, beautiful rosebushes. Starting on my first birthday in June, until we moved to Arizona, she brought me a huge bouquet of roses of every color. I was positive that she lived in a mansion.