Sunday is Mother’s Day. It’s a day when all of the restaurants will be packed with families celebrating Mother’s Day. And of course, the greenhouses will be extra busy this weekend selling all kind of flowers and plants as gifts for Mother’s Day.
My mother is gone now but that doesn’t prevent me from thinking about her and perhaps planting some geraniums for her to see this weekend. You see, geraniums were her favorite flower along with gladiolus. Perhaps it was because geraniums are fairly hardy and once you get them going, they can pretty well take care of themselves. Memorial Day would never go by without my mother planting some geraniums on her mother’s grave. I never knew her mother. She was a rather frail woman and died when my mother was about 31 years old – a couple of years before I was born. She was left with the job of taking care of her father, my father, and my older brother.
There were always geraniums on the front porch of our farm house and flowers in the garden behind the house. She would spend all of her summer evenings working in the garden after the family was fed until it was dark. It was a hard life by any of today’s standards, but that was what she loved to do and she was good at it as the family enjoyed fresh vegetables from early spring till late in the fall when the kohlrabies and cabbages were ready. And the family enjoyed canned and frozen fruit and vegetables all winter long, twice a day!
If your mother is alive today, tell her how much you appreciate what she does for you. And don’t worry if you have no money for a fancy gift, she doesn’t really care. Take a little time to reflect on how rocky your road would be if your mother was not there to help you around some of life’s boulders. And so to all mothers, Happy Mother’s Day! Your work is recognized and you are appreciated!