Monday, April 27, 2009

Bluebells....

I was always fascinated with this plant as a young boy, growing up on the farm in southern Iowa. When my parents bought the place, it was established as a traditional farm of the those times. Farms were self sufficient with orchards, grow your own meat, and grow your own vegetables. As a traditional farm the previous owners also had things planted that we continued to enjoy. There were all the fruit trees and the grape vines and the stray herbs like dill that came up volunteer each year.
The bluebells seemed magical as they were also planted by the previous owners and many times the gardens then were filled with weeds and depending on the year you cleared them or maybe you didn't. Our one set of plants came up next to the grapes and popped right up inspite of the tall grass. It would be a pleasant greeting and one of the first blooming flowers for the year. We would clear things around them after they started blooming. Forsythia would follow and then dandelions. My mom later got into Iris and I planted sunflowers. That was a long time ago and the barn has fallen in, sheds have been destroyed by wind and neglect and the house hasn't been painted blue since 1973. In fact it hasn't been ever painted since 1973.

2 comments:

Erin said...

Very pretty. Bluebells have always been in the same category for me as Butter and Eggs (Yellow Toadflax). We had them in the same area of the garden when I was a kid and the purple and yellow looked so pretty together.

L. D. said...

I have never heard of Butter and Eggs. I will have to look that one up. Take care.