Always Flowers for Mother's Day

Flowers—everyone gets their mom flowers for Mother’s Day, don’t they? This lesson started early for me with orchid corsages for Mother’s Day. Grandma, Mom and my aunt all got them. Pappy bought them and put them in the refrigerator. When it was Dad’s turn to buy them, he bought silk orchids and still put them in the refrigerator. Growing up across the street from Orners’ Greenhouse one of my first paying jobs was wrapping dull plastic pots in brightly colored florist foil. Each container held a variety of flowering bedding plants like pansies, petunias, pocketbook flowers, marigolds, geraniums and begonias. It was also my job to keep these specialty items well stocked just inside the door for quick purchase. Every year Charlie Orner would cross the street with a flat full of brilliantly colored bedding plants for my mom. In addition to the neighborly generosity, it turned out he was also ensuring that when he looked across the street he’d get to see the types and colors of flowers he liked. There have been lots of flowers throughout the years for Mom, some memorable like the vintage fishing creel artfully arranged by our small-town florist or the big yellow Oaxacan-style flowerpot that was woefully out of place in our central Pennsylvania back yard. For me, it’s usually a big planter of tulips that she’s able to plant around her yard. They come back each year until the squirrels dig them up and eat them. One year it wasn’t flowers, but an entire garden. Mom wanted a Lasagna Garden so we gathered all the materials and spent the afternoon putting it in off to the side of her patio instead at the rear of the property where it had always been. She’s lived in the same house over fifty years and the privacy hedge of pines between properties now towered high enough to cast shade over what had once received full sun. Then there was the frustrating matter of dragging a hose the whole way across the yard if the garden needed watering. Nope. Mom’s common sense stepped in and put the new vegetable garden next to water spigot at the house.Having gone to market on Sunday for nearly twenty years, I don’t get to actually spend Mother’s Day with Mom. It has become a drawn-out holiday of sorts for us. This year her flowers were delivered last week along with a bag of dirt. No tulips this year, but a flat of begonias, red ones. She had lamented waiting too long last year and by the time she got to the greenhouse (Orners is sadly long gone) they only had white ones left. As soon as I got home that day I called her local greenhouse and asked about red or pink begonias. “We won’t have them in until right before Mother’s Day,” I was informed. I gave the woman my name and telephone number asking to be notified when I could order them. Sure enough, last week I got a call about their availability. Enter the age of COVID19 when everything can be delivered. “We can have them there tomorrow,” she offered. When online retailers, big box stores and grocery chains’ online ordering for pickup or delivery is backed up for weeks, leave it to a local greenhouse to rise to the occasion of Mother’s Day. But Mother’s Day won’t be over for Mom on Sunday. Next week she’s going to get what most mothers don’t want from their kids—a load of crap. That is unless their kid is a farmer and it’s for her garden.