Happy Mother's Day

My Mother's day memories are centered on following my mother and grandmother around the nursery, usually with a card board flat in hand. The green house at the nurseries always had a musty warm smell and there were plenty of puddles in the crunchy gravel to navigate. I would watch each of them, picking out the six packs of flowers they wanted,deadheading and picking off yellow leaves on their own choices as well others. Both didn't necessarily like petunia but always got some for their abundant blooming ability- as a filler for the more glorious flowers.
Conversation would be on the different gardens, the shade garden, the cutting garden, which roses would need replaced and their "hardy rating". In her latter years, my grandma went to more pots, on her porch, clustered by the gate in the back.
Geraniums have always been inside my mothers home-African Violets always were in my grandmother-never remember them buying either- each was expert in slipping a new shoot and getting it to grow- a skill I will never have.
I enjoyed a visit by my mother a few weeks ago- we did go to the nursery. She bought my a geranium for Mother's Day and I bought her a rose, with a very good rating. Before she left, she helped me pot the new geranium in my Jardiniere pot- which was my grandmothers- one of the last things she gave me before she died.
The pot was her Aunt Mary's who's husband went off to fight in the Civil War- Under the pot is the birthday plate- that held the birthday cakes for my mother and her siblings when they were little- wonder why the birthday plate was demoted to hold the Jardiniere pot? There is no crack in it or anything?
This Mother's Day I won't be at the nursery- two days later, I'll be heading to a writer's conference and a week away from the garden would not be good.
Plus the talent of growing beautiful things was not pasted down to me- I try- but my studio and writing pull me away- from being in the garden, but I can appreciate their love of it, having the same love for a different medium, one that consumes my thoughts and plans, just like my mother and grandmother's garden is for them.
So Happy Mother's Day, Mom and thank you for teaching my to love the simple and the beautiful.