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| Passing down plants (Summer 2005) |
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The flora in your garden can live for generations
Even before winter’s crisp winds stop blowing down the slopes of Rich Mountain, a group of courageous little daffodils poke their blossoms at the east Tennessee sky, shaking their
yellow fists at whatever late feints and jabs Mother Nature might throw at them.
I look for them each year at this time, and each year there they are–tough, hardy, fierce, and colorful–spring’s wake-up call. My grandmother, who loved survivors and things that persist despite the odds, would cherish them. In fact, my grandmother did cherish them.
These particular daffodils started out more than 80 years ago, planted by my grandmother, Hattie Mae McMahan Blake, at the Cleburne County, Ala., farmhouse where she lived with my grandfather and more kids than she had fingers on both hands. She wanted early-blooming daffodils to wipe away the grim traces of winter and maybe put a few smiles on the faces of her family. She supposedly did her own selection, finding those that popped from the red clay at the first hints of spring.
A couple of decades ago, my mother went to the old homeplace in the Redlands and dug up some of those daffodils. She planted them at her home 70 miles or so northward. Fifteen years ago, when I built my Tennessee home yet another 175 miles north from there, she gave me a set of grandmother’s daffodils.
They’re still beautiful all these years later, and they’re still putting smiles on faces. That’s the joy of perennials. Love them, and they keep loving right back, down through the years, generation after generation. Like old photographs and well-worn fading letters, they tie you to the past.
Splashes of magic
Around here, scattered daffodils mark old homesites many years after the houses themselves disappeared. In nearby Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, daffodils show visitors where the farmhouses stood many years ago.
Irises can work their long-lasting magic, too. Ours–splashes of yellows and purples–also came from my mother’s flower gardens. They originated, however, in the plantings of one of her older friends. They’re robust, resilient plants, eager to please. When transplanting and separating them, a bulb set barely under the surface of the soil sends a plant shooting upward next spring.
Living reminders
Plants like rhododendrons and azaleas can bring back memories, too. Many of ours were transplanted from the old property where we lived before moving here. Along with the daffodils and irises, they beautify the landscape. Perhaps more importantly, they help us see and touch our history.
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