A Portrait of My Mother
 Nana's Thumb (A Portrait of My Mother) |
Yes, you guessed it. My mother had a green thumb. Everywhere we lived, and we moved alot, she planted amazing beauty. In Tennessee and Pennsylvania she left thousands of spring bulbs to spread, blanketing wooded hillsides, rare wildflowers spreading among rock gardens, large vegetable gardens and strawberry patches, and well-loved flowers of countless varieties. She was most at home in a woodsy naturalized garden. She was always giving away bouquets, even mailed fresh daffodils to California. I remember bouquets of miniature roses, one for each year of a birthday, all fitting into a tiny medicine bottle. The passing of many beloved people in her life was each honored with a memorial plant. When she lost her last real home, reclaiming the old nickname of her youth, "Gypsy", she moved about the country visiting friends and family, working for others, helping in their gardens. She had an unofficial garden service for a while, The Green Grasshopper. My mother has lived in a nursing home for years now, struggling with Parkinson's Disease. She does not walk easily unaided, and hands are always shaking. Still she joined the Flower of the Month Club, passing its benefits on to others, and ordering plants, bulbs and even trees through the mail for other's gardens, including mine. Friends and family try to keep something blooming there in her little room throughout the year. I realized long after we three girls all left home and she was still buying dolls (mostly to give away), that it was her love of dolls that had kept our homes so full of the little people all those years. And so it is only appropriate that I honor my mother's great love of flowers with another most special "doll." |
