My southern-preacher daddy often advised his congregation from the pulpit to “Bloom where you’re planted.” He meant it in terms of doing good works, no matter where life takes you. Another meaning of the phrase was evident in all his sermons as he exhorted the church to quit complaining and get on with what you’re put here to do.
As a masterful gardener, daddy had an aversion to forcing blooms. When pressured by mother, he’d cut flowers for her and bring them inside, one bloom at a time, in a small vase. But he refused to buy hothouse flowers because of what he considered their unnatural growing conditions. His theory about blooming where you’re planted was at odds with an industry’s need to “force” plants.
The root (sorry) of his aversion to cutting flowers may have been the fact that his family were farmers by occupation. Some of them were sharecroppers and at other times they grew vegetable gardens and sold produce for a living. Daddy gardened with his own daddy in order to survive. There was never time or space for recreational plants.
When we moved from the deep south to southern California, a new world grew outside. Birds of Paradise. Avocados. Camellias. For the first time, he had a pleasure garden and he delighted in tending plants that nobody had to have.
At first he was apologetic about the rows of irises he planted around his vegetable patch, but soon delicate pansies lined the driveway out front. He was fearless. He’d try anything. He coaxed to giant size some plants that shouldn’t have been able to thrive in Glendale, and later Palm Springs, California.
To the end, he resisted indoor plants.
Daddy had been gone for years by the time I began putting narcissus bulbs in a pot on the windowsill during the winter. This year my small granddaughter helped pat the soil around the bulbs and give them a good long drink. Every day we watch the shoots grow taller.
I can’t wait to see her face when the first lacy white bloom pokes out. Who am I kidding? I plant these for me, for no purpose other than the pure enjoyment of watching them send up green shoots and then those blooms with the intense fragrance.
If this is a kind of sinful excess, it’s one I intend to commit every year that I’m lucky enough to enjoy the winter light. If Daddy were here, if he’d had a chance to meet his great-granddaughter, I’m guessing he’d make an exception. He might find a way to include our windowsill garden in his definition of blooming where you’re planted.
Ó Anita Garner 2008
Lovely sentiments on a lovely subject, as usual. You make me realize we should not only take time to “stop and smell the roses,” we should plant them and nurture them as we nurture ourselves at the same time.
Your daddy was a wise man. That apple didn’t drop far.
I believe your daddy would certainly approve of your planting paperwhites with your granddaughter. Your post reminds me of my grandfather who’s been gone for 30 years now. He loved to grow everything from vegetables to flowers to ornamental trees. He was also a minister. He wasn’t into houseplants though. That was my grandmother’s department.