Samhain Publishing

Spring starts slowly in Western New York. Some people think we move from the dead of winter to the heat of summer in the same week. Of course, everyone has their own way of marking the beginning of spring, a robin, crocuses, removal of the ice boom on Lake Erie. For me, the first sign of spring came in February. No, not the groundhog, but my mother carrying a big stack of seed catalogs into my house.

We would spend hours at my kitchen table looking at the pictures of oversize tomatoes, impossibly red strawberries and fat pink roses. It was hard to imagine flowerbeds, pots of geraniums and showy petunias in February. But Mom had a vision. She ordered her seeds, asking me if there was anything in particular I wanted that year. I never could think of anything more exotic than marigolds or pansies.

Spring came to her basement in March, when she planted her seeds. Rows of seed flats sat on hand built wooden shelves, with fluorescent grow lights attached. She spent hours in the basement watering her tiny seedlings with contraptions made out of old laundry detergent bottles and plastic tubing.

As the months passed and the seedlings grew into healthy young plants, she would prepare her beds. Mom didn’t want perfume for Mother’s Day. Bags of dirt and fertilizer were her favorite presents.

When the weather finally started to warm we hauled the flats of plants outside to “harden” in her homemade cold frames. She had them on wheels so they could be rolled into the garage if the temperatures dropped too low. Memorial Day weekend was always considered safe to plant her flowers. I can still see her kneeling in her garden, floppy hat tied securely on her head, putting her plants gently into the earth.

After Memorial Day, when all her plants were safely in their beds, she planted pots and pots of flowers to adorn her backyard and mine. The last year she was with us, she planted two strawberry pots full of snapdragons and placed them on our front porch. I’m not much good at starting a garden or knowing where to put things, but once the plants are in, I’m an ace at maintenance. The snapdragons flourished that summer but my mother didn’t. She left us in July, suddenly without warning. My family was devastated, me most of all.

Somehow we got through the first few months after her death. Her dog and cat became our dog and cat. I found good homes for her orchids, her cactus garden, and the hundreds of other plants she nurtured so well. My aunts, uncles and cousins picked out some of her paintings to remember her by. One thing you find out when someone dies is how many friends they had. Mom had a lot of friends, people from her painting classes, other gardeners, neighbors, and co-workers. Kind, smart, dedicated, funny, talented were words all of them used to describe her.

When spring came, we felt the loss acutely, even more than the holidays or her birthday. No seed catalogs, no dirt to buy, no flowers ready to put in. My husband and I went to the local nursery and bought annuals. We planted the pots, but it wasn’t the same. They didn’t flourish the same way Mom’s did.

Then at the end of May that first year after her death, I noticed little green sprouts coming up in the flowerbed near the front porch. My husband identified them as snapdragons. “Probably seeded from the ones we had last year.” I watered them, gave them a little fertilizer and in a couple of weeks they were everywhere, beautiful, colorful, just like Mom.

In the seven years since her death, the snapdragons have spread out to the other front flowerbed. I look forward to the little green shoots in the spring. They are now my sign that spring is here, and that my Mom is still growing flowers for me.