To The Growers of Flowers

Not the delicate tentativeness of Spring

Not the mute retreating of Autumn

Not the stark subtlety of Winter

Summer is nature wide open, bold, full, exuberant, extroverted.

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Nowhere is this made more clear than the Summer Flower Garden.

They introduced me to them early, inadvertently, quietly.  They were always there, the flowers and the growers of flowers.

I was in the back seat, mesmerized this pre-dawn rainy morning by the rivulets of rain water making their way diagonally across the window.  Stuttering as the wind swept them along, reflecting in shades of early morning grey.  Dozing with the purr of the engine, enveloped in the warmth of childhood simplicity.

Great Lakes port towns, cool even in summer, misty;  beautiful flower gardens Mother would comment.  Flowers past their bloom elsewhere where going strong here, like stepping back in time, having another chance. Front yards, window boxes, flowing over with blooms of red, yellows, purple, pink.

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Memory too is subject to those same vagaries of focus.  Some areas clear and sharp, some more of a glimpse, an impression, leaving room for imagination.

Approaching the house with dust billowing up behind from the long gravel drive.  Mid afternoon now, rain and sleepiness left behind in eager anticipation.  A white frame house, an immigrant homestead.  The front porch, wood lath strips around screens, sometimes with the winter plastic still in place, its purpose long past.  Summer flowers were always here, up against the porch:  hollyhock, white daisy, morning glory.   The comings and goings of the house took place through the kitchen side door.  That same door through which I would carry the white enamel bucket of drinking water, cool, refreshing;  fetched from the artesian well at the barn. They would gather then, circling on lawn chairs, these growers of flowers.

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Uncles;  farmers in the summer, lumberjacks and trappers in winter.  Old, or so it seemed to a young boy, stretched out at noon in the shade of machinery in remote fields.  Round circle bleached and worn on the chest pocket of coveralls.  Laconic, at ease with the prairie’s vast openness.  I stood wide eyed.  Rain approaching afar, a curtain, walking.  Wind picks up, a scent of water and dust.  Golden light on field upon field. To this and them, certainly, I owe my love of openness, places less peopled, the far horizon.

We would pack up the lunch, they would return to the fields of timothy, hay, oats, wheat, blue flax.

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Summer flower gardens formed the borders and accents of childhood.  Lining path, alley way, sidewalk, as we traversed our world.  By foot or bicycle we freely moved, seemingly unwatched but never uncared for. Imaginations at full throttle, tumbling, hurtling, in riotous play.  Backyard fences, white, picket;  flowers hugging close, poking through. Gates, open to us or over.

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They introduced me to them early, inadvertently, quietly.  They were always there, the flowers and the growers of flowers. The Aunts, Mother, Grandmother, neighbor, friend, wife.  I thank them now.  I thank them for bringing this beauty to me.

Summer comes on strong, nothing held back, full speed ahead.  Yet, still there may be places of contemplation, more appealing perhaps to quieter personalities tiring of the sun’s constant prodding.

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The cool serenity of Water Lily.  Floating gently on dark water. It, also, is part of the Summer Garden.

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Setting out to photograph this day I had no particular theme in mind.  Moving through the streets and parks of town one photograph led to another, a theme emerged.  Summer Flower Gardens.  The connection between these gardens and childhood memories, though evidently present, was not apparent until processing the images later. A travel from flower gardens of North Carolina to walking rain on a northern Minnesota prairie. Unexpected, enjoyable.

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