Stop to Smell Mom's Flowers

What are flowers good for?

Ever since I caught the gardening bug, it seems I've focused heavily only on the veggies. When you are working with a small yard, flowers can sometimes be dismissed as a space-devouring luxury. Not to mention, I tend to be practical to a fault, and for the longest time (well, my whole life, really), I have thought flowers were kind of a waste. Pretty, yes. But what do they do?

Plus, my mom grows flowers. That's her thing. That last little echo of daughter rebellion states that "I do not want to become my mother."

Uncle Loren's GIANT Garden

Part of my 'The Gardeners in My Life' series!

It was ONE degree outside this morning. The skeletons in the garden are covered under a layer of powdery freeze, and the memories of summer seem impossibly long ago. Here we enter another cycle. Each winter, even though we know the warm days will eventually return, it's just as hard as the year before to imagine that the ground and the world will warm up. Not for months, though. Oh, my bones are aching already from the cold.