Art

Middle Georgia has enjoyed an extended spring this year; what old timers refer to as a “real spring”. Fifty degree mornings in mid-May are unusual for this part of the planet as we typically go from winter to summer without an in-between. I am a die-hard cold weather hater, but I have to admit I have enjoyed the mild temperatures.

A big bonus of a lengthy spring is the amount of time we are able to enjoy blooming plants. Flowers. The cool air has probably slowed the growth of my vegetable garden somewhat, but I’ve lived long enough to know that I will soon tire of dragging a garden hose and watching plants I’d known since birth slowly wither in the heat.

Having grown up in a rural area, most of the flowers I was accustomed to were wildflowers. My parents were always slowing down (or stopping) to positively identify some type of roadside plant that had gone unnoticed until it bloomed and I learned the names of many beautiful plants. I’m not saying that we had no store-bought flowers planted in our yard, but I will say that we had more than a few native plants that were allocated from the roadside. Many of these were wildflowers that, not having been manipulated by modern science were not as ornate as their hybrid offspring, but I learned to love and appreciate them nonetheless.

Somewhere along the way I decided that my family’s love of all things growing and blooming was unique. I knew that I was probably one of the only kids in Mrs. Bruner’s science class that knew what a host plant for butterflies was, but I didn’t understand that many of the other kids (and their families) loved flowers and plants for no other reason than that they were beautiful. Simple aesthetic love; art for the sake of art.  The realization that people who would never attend an art show or buy a sculpture; those who could not pronounce the scientific name of a sunflower (or care to even if you helped them) would spend long hours and hundreds of dollars on something as frivolous as flowers.

As we back out of the driveway for our morning commute, my daughter leans back to allow me to look for oncoming traffic; I didn’t even have to ask. We make our first turn and she opens the console, takes out two peppermints, and absently places one in my outstretched palm. She reminds me that today is Friday and pick up will be the normal 3:15 as we come to our last turn before leaving the neighborhood. “Wow!” my daughter exclaims as I automatically tap the brakes expecting the usual family of confused deer to narrowly escape my bumper. “Look at that bush”. When I look at the bright orange flowering shrub that was (until this morning) a nondescript green ball of leaves, I understand why we go to such great lengths to plant flowers.