Legacy of flowers

Front yard, back yard, everywhere I look, there are flowers that Sandy selected, planted, and tended. An abundance of blue flowers, of course, but also the bright yellows of daffodils and the vibrant orange of calendula. We're rapidly approaching the time of year that she most loved the front yard, when she'd say, "This is the bluest it gets all year." And I always agreed: at that point, just about a month or two from now, most of the daffodils and tulips are gone and what remain are the vinca, bluebeard, lupine, delphiniums, campanula, wood hyacinth, rosemary, lavender, forget-me-nots, sweet peas, etc. Before the crocosmia steals the show with its late-summer oranges and reds.

Here, Sandy's fighting with a poppy in the cutting garden,
attempting to pick it for a bouquet. She didn't have snips
because we were in the middle of our portrait photo shoot.
Red poppies were an ongoing battle. Sandy loved them; I
wasn't wild about the huge volunteers that crowded out
vegetables, so every year we'd walk through the garden
together and decide which ones I was allowed to pull, and
which had to be left until they'd finished flowering.

But all of them — blue or not — were Sandy's contribution. I don't know if it's my Germanic heritage, Midwestern upbringing, or just my relentless feeling that there isn't enough time to get everything done, but I've never been a flower gardener. I like flowers and enjoy the beautiful yard. But left to my own devices, I grow practical things: vegetables, fruit trees, cat grass, and sturdy long-lasting trees. Anything pretty in our yard was Sandy's doing; the stuff we eat — well, that's mostly me.

I learned to recognize and appreciate specific flowers with Sandy. I even grew them. As the one who starts seeds in the household, it fell to me to nurture anything that needed to be started indoors. Flower seeds are much fussier than vegetable seeds, but I happily attempted anything Sandy had fallen in love with as she'd drooled over the catalogs she referred to as "flower porn."

Sandy took these photos on June 8 last
year, a week before everything went to
hell. She was always taking pictures of
her garden - and her cats.

Now, I'm both a vegetable gardener and a flower gardener, though luckily for me, most of the flowers are doing well enough on their own that I have a little time to come up to speed on their needs. I'm not the only one tending Sandy's flowers, though. She planted bulbs for her mom (in two different yards) and for various friends, and she sent plants and seeds to others who were crafting gardens far away. All of us, I know, think of Sandy when we see the flowers she brought into our lives. I think that's a lovely legacy.

I do have to wonder what will remind people of me when I'm gone. The first thing that occurred to me was my to-do list. Not the most appealing of legacies, I think!