THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT LILACS

Flowers seem to captivate us.

For Grandpa Ranum, it was roses. He liked getting them as gifts and he had a way about him that was nurturing. Mother liked marigolds around the foundation of the house, (although Daddy always said evergreens were the best for foundation planting). Mother didn't care, she bought flats of marigolds and fed them lots of fertilizer and made them into bushes with huge blossoms. Grandma Mae had her garden of glads and Grandma Ranum had her stand of Hollyhocks. Mother's birth mother, Clara, had climbing roses on a trellis, as did Atropa in Kansas. And Ella, the children's other grandmother had petunia's lining her walk from the curb to her front step.


Perhaps for me, the best of all, are lilacs. It is a spot of heaven. On a road trip, we passed a farm with lilac bushes on two sides. They had not bloomed yet, just loaded with buds ready to pop. A short cut to our house goes by a stand of them. From the sun room, I can see they have now bloomed from two days ago.

I have pictures of my daughter holding lilacs. The bushes at the house in KS where under her window and the scent drifted in. The bushes had been a garden gift from friends. We had dug them up in their yard and moved them.

Perhaps I need to think more about daisies, which swing and sway in the wind and when the seeds are cast far from home, they seem to take root, grow, and with their yellow centers, capture the sun and dance in the wind.

Perhaps dancing in the wind and casting seed here and there is my wannabee spirit. Perhaps it is my spirit.

For now, a touch of heaven in the blooming of the lilacs.

Flower. Bloom where you are planted.

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