The Right Mix

My mother was a gardener -

raising both beautiful flowers and vegetables.

I do neither.

DeRay tenaciously plants, waters, weeds, and harvests

a vegetable garden each summer.

Our only flowers.

tulips and dandelions.

come up spontaneously

each spring,

bringing joy and color to our hearts.

It's no wonder we make such a big fuss over them.  

BALANCED GARDENS – THE RIGHT MIX

(A tribute to Mama)

By DeLoy H. Esplin

At least allegorically, practical work and the

                mundane, are vegetables.

 Beauty and some other nice amenities, are

                             flowers.

   In very reality, gardens come basically in

                         two kinds:

    Vegetable varieties and flower varieties.

 

     Some people seem naturally bent on

                         vegetables

                      Some on flowers.

    In all uses of the word, our mother had

                   about the right mix

     Of flowers and vegetables, both in her

               garden and in her life.

   Rooted in the deep rich sand of a ranch in

             Mohave County Arizona,

    She knew how to run a vegetable garden

      To have deep, straight, weed-free rows.

      After early and later watering turns, the

                               fruits of

  Productive, fertile stalks, plants and vines in

                 our large family garden

    Were bottled or stored in the root cellar

   For the winter’s supply, we all understood.

         From somewhere unknown to me,

           But clearly part of her being,

Mother also had a love for and need to grow

                             flowers.

  Are roses, irises, chrysanthemums, lawns,

            Or snowball or spirea bushes,

       Practical in raising a family of ten?

Can one bright flower bed liven up an entire

                           town?

For decades she was our town’s postmaster,

                   Our math tutor, our mom,

                  Visitor to the town’s elderly,

Presenter of public readings, private cowboy

                           ballad singer,

                 Junior Sunday School’s adopted

                        grandmother,

             And grower of the best vegetables

                    And flower gardens.

   I still say after these many years, Amy

             Heaton, our mother, had

       About the right mix of flowers and

  Vegetables in her garden and in her life.

(Written December 8, 1997, for her history.)*

*Used without permission.