The Japanese iris are in bloom as well as Paul Scarlet roses but their colors are misted in the rain. All the flowers are a month or more early due to the warm winter, and while they as always in the spring signal renewal of life and hope, this year they call forth memories of Aunt Mary. It is as if she dressed in cut off jeans and a t-shirt walks in the mist checking and delighting in each bloom.

Aunt Mary loved a garden. Her rangy body walked the rows from the first warm planting day until frost stole her passion from her for a season. I can see her now making furrows with a hand pushed harrow and sowing her seeds carefully by hand. Bending down and standing up to sight down the rows, she was in her element. Not for her fancy seed tapes or whirligig sowers, the labor made the harvest sweeter.

That harvest was shared with neighbors and family. Given fresh when possible it was also canned, dried and frozen for the cold season. It served to remind her of the summer to come and to grace the winter meals with hints of summer’s warmth.

Winters were not plantless as she had house plants. Their greenery and blooms gave”life” to her house during Ohio’s dull grey winter skies. One special plant graced her kitchen, a Christmas cactus . “Not one of those puny Thanksgiving things at Krogers” she would announce. This plant was nearly eighty olds and had been handed down the generations of the Kistler family. It was a family treasure as she herself was.

The passion with growing things touched other areas of her Ohio farm life. Every night she would record the weather statistics of the day as well as few personal thoughts on the condition of her garden and the harvest. That done she would take out her hoop and trace flowers with dainty stitches on quilt squares. She hunted for years for a Sunflower pattern as it was her favored flower. She never found one and she regretted it in her later years when her sight failed.


So while my flowers fill my yard with color they also fill my soul.