The perfect flower garden, in my mind, could vary in any number of ways if it has one necessity; tall, elegant, flowers. All the kinds that are easily cut to grace the kitchen table, that nightstand beside your bed, or taken to a friend. I adore fresh cut flowers. In the novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn there is a scene where young Francie Nolan takes a Saturday trip to the library. The chores are done, her hard-working mother has been helped, and she is free...
"After Fancie had come in and closed the door quietly behind her-the way you were supposed to do in the library-she looked quickly at the little golden-brown pottery jug which stood at the end of the librarian's desk. It was a season indicator. In the fall it held a few springs of bittersweet and at Christmas time it held holly. She knew spring was coming, even if there was snow on the ground, when she saw pussy willow in the bowl. And today, on this summer Saturday of 1912, what was the bowl holding? She moved her eyes slowly up the jug past the thin green stems and little round leaves and saw...Nasturtiums! Red, yellow, gold, and ivory white. A head pain caught her between the eyes at the taking in of such a wonderful sight. It was something to be remembered all her life.
"When I get big," she thought, "I will have such a brown bowl and in hot August there will be nasturtiums in it.""
When I get big, Francie, I think I will have such a garden, and such a brown bowl, and in hot August I hope to be planting my nasturtiums in it, as well.
These are the flowers I have been enjoying this week, though part of me still wonders if I should have bought the daisies...
2 comments:
Great Blooms!
Jennifer
My mother always had a glass vase full of wallflowers from the garden in the middle of the dining table at this time of the year. The smell of those wallflowers and those wonderful deep browny/red, orange and golden flowers has stayed with me.
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