Two Flower Stories

Irises

Picture courtesy of Aunt Tracy
In our yard there were a lot of irises. There was a long row of irises between our house and the house next door, and there were two rows of irises going down the path in the backyard and more irises at the end of the path. A lot of them were dark purple, and there were others that were pale blue, yellow, and yellow wih red. When they were all blooming in the middle of May, they were incredibly beautiful. One year my brother counted the blossoms and found that there were more than 2000 at one time!
Sometimes I would take a bouquet of irises to my teacher. One day I was carrying the bouquet when I went past the house of a lady in the next street. She had irises that were even more beautiful than mine! Some were peach colored, and they were very big. When she saw my bouquet she was very friendly. She asked, "Would you like some of my irises to add to your bouquet"? I was very happy to take some of hers and take my favorite teacher the most beautiful bouquet ever.

Petunias

Picture courtesy of the bridge on Flickr

In front of our house near the front door there were two large flower pots. When I was in kindergarten, there was a special sale at school where we could buy flower seeds. I bought a package of petunia seeds for 5 cents. I put half of them in each flower pot. The little plants came up and the petunias bloomed. They were pale blue and pink and purple. Petunias usually are annual flowers in the northern part of the United States. That means that usually they just bloom for one year and then don't bloom again. But I guess that either St Louis is far enough south or I was very lucky. Those petunias came back up and bloomed every year for as long as we lived in the house! Maybe everyone else just thought of them as "the petunias" but I thought of them as "my petunias" because I had planted them. I felt very special every spring when they bloomed.