Mother's Day is here again. Spring is rich with memories as well as flowers. When a mom is gone, the Mother's Day commercials, cards and sentiments are hard to watch. So for many years, we've tended a Memorial Garden in our yard where lots of my mom's favorite flowers and bushes grow. We started small at first. Originally a circular ring surrounded three Canadian Hemlock trees. We expanded to include spirea bushes which formed a privacy border around the backyard of my childhood home. In following seasons, I found a statue of a little girl on a bench with a basket for flowers. We surrounded her with forget-me-nots. A border of hyacinths bloom with color and fragrance in early spring.
Each year, some aspect of the garden changes. Bleeding hearts, another of Mom's favorites, have grown tall. We lost a hemlock and replaced it with an Alaskan cedar. A yellow rose bush--my mom especially liked yellow roses--produces rose hips and we don't trim it back as much as our other garden roses. For the past few years, I've been growing flowers from seeds. In early summer, we plant geraniums I grow and sow zinnia seeds to replace the spring flowers. This year I'm adding Shasta daisies for two reasons. My mom liked them and... I've named a dog in my second mystery "Shasta" to commemorate that.
Just as life continuously changes, the garden does, too. Each bush that greens, each flower that sprouts, each blossom that blooms and gives off a glorious scent, brings back memories. So on Mother's Day, as well as through the summer, I remember and relive a little of my childhood all over again.
©2013 Karen Rose Smith
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That is beautiful, what a lovely idea
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