It seems that my sense of timing and my enthusiasm to execute have gotten out of whack. I am not sure how this happened as I rely on the calendar to keep track what I should be doing and when I should be doing it! But somehow things began to get out of hand last month. I blame it on Memorial Day weekend being scheduled a whole week early! Everyone knows that Memorial Day is on the 30th of May, but no, we’ve had to mess with our major holidays so we can celebrate them on long weekends.
It has always been my objective to have my garden planted by Memorial Day. But this year it just didn’t happen. We took off Memorial Day to enjoy some of the local Memorial Day festivities and a barbequed chicken dinner at the Hopewell Grange. It was a lovely day but I did nothing in the garden on that day. On Wednesday the 29th of May, it was so hot outside that my insides melted along with any enthusiasm that I might have had. I used every possible excuse that I could come up with to avoid having to work in the garden. But there in the garden, the first of my poppies started blooming – right on schedule! I did nothing to deserve their bright red-orange colors this spring. But their timing and their enthusiasm to start blooming was not blunted by man’s Memorial Day celebration. No, they started blooming with great enthusiasm even though I could hardly muster up enough enthusiasm to ride on the riding lawn mower in the day’s heat!
The poppies in my garden always remind me of the beautiful poem “In Flanders Fields” (click here) by John McCrae, a Canadian army physician who fought in the First World War. As I began to research the words for the poem “In Flanders Fields” which I hope that you will read (click here), I read that the poppy flowers have a marvelous trait – their seeds can stay dormant for a number of years but when all around them is laid waste, they muster up the strength of come up out of the ground and start blooming once more!
Perhaps it was the beautiful color of the poppy flowers that gave me enough energy to get busy and work in my garden. I planted potatoes, zucchini, yellow summer squash, and yellow beans. It’s not all done; there are carrots to be planted along with some onions. But at least I now feel that I am back in sync with Mother Nature. She seemed to agree with me as she sent a nice gentle rain overnight!
Jim,
Nice story and of course pictures. I enjoy when people talk about Flanders Field since not many know the story.
Mary
Mary, Thank you for the kind comment. It was because of my blog that I learned about the author of “In Flanders Fields”. I learned that John McCrae was a Canadian. He threw away his original writing because he thought that it wasn’t good enough. (Strike any familiar cords?) The writing was rejected by many publishers before it became widely accepted. There’s a lot of lessons to be learned here!