A Day For Remembering & Honoring Our Nation's Heroes

"They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation."

~ Henry Ward Beecher       

We remember them with grateful hearts this Memorial Day.

And every day.

Some Words (and Flowers) For Our Mothers . . .

It has become a well-established tradition to give our Mothers the gift of flowers for Mother's Day. Flowers symbolize life and fertility and therefore they are an apropos gift to the women who gave birth to each and every one of us.

I grew up in a home with very little money, but there were always flowers. We raised much of our own food to make ends meet, but at least two to three rows of our precious garden were always reserved for flowers. My grandmother, a flower garden aficionada, began this tradition and my mother took up her mantle once my grandmother became wheelchair-bound. As a kid, I was never too fond of having to pick tomatoes or cucumbers, but I did love spending time selecting the prettiest dahlias for a tabletop vase.

After years of living on a farm (and many long, childhood hours spent planting, weeding, picking, and canning vegetables), I said goodbye to gardening forever when I moved away from home to attend college.

Or so I thought.

Once I had my own children, a desperate need to plant roses surfaced from somewhere deep in my psyche. Then I, like my mother and grandmother before me, found myself cultivating large swathes of flower gardens around every home we have ever owned.

I suspect it is a mother's inner magpie that motivates us to beautify our homes, our nests. Or perhaps it is just because our own mothers instilled the appreciation of beauty into us when we were children.

I know mine did.

In honor of Mother's Day, I will share a few photos of flowers from my gardens; the ones that will always remind me of my mother & my grandmother -- because they are beautiful.

Mothers hold their children’s hands for a while, but their hearts forever. —Author Unknown

Mother – that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. --- T. DeWitt Talmage

All mothers are working mothers. —Author Unknown

My Grandmother and Mother standing beside their rows of flowers that bordered our vegetable gardens.

They did what Mothers do: provided sustenance & beauty!