by judyatlarge

Created on: June 03, 2008   Last Updated: August 07, 2008

My sister and I learned about wild-flower gardening from our aunt Alice who took time and effort to connect with her nieces and nephews, though she never had children of her own. On spring days, she'd wander through the forest, along trails known only to deer and Alice, stopping here and there, having seen things my sister and I would happily have plodded right over or past. Always, in the woods with her, we walked softly and spoke in muted tones.

She showed us where twin-bell grew, dainty, delicate little pink blossoms, one on each side of a slender stalk, no more than two inches high. She introduced us to Indian Pipes, a silvery-white fungus with ruffled "blossoms" on bent stems, looking for all the world as if they could be turned over, stuffed with tobacco and smoked. Fragile and rare, they grow in clusters near rotting logs, in slightly moist ground and have an ethereal glow about them, even on the dullest days. "We won't disturbed them," Alice murmured. "It's a treat to see them. We're blessed to have come across them"

We were, my sister and I, blessed to have Auntie Alice as a guide to the magic, the treasures of the land she loved and husbanded. From the forests around our coastal British Columbia home, she created her own wild garden and taught us much about the cultivation and conservation of wild plants. She introduced is to what she called "fairy-cups", circlets of lichen growing on bare rock, small circles of pale green with red rims and yes, we could visualize fairies in the very early morning sipping sweet dew or rainwater from them.

With Alice, we learned where to look for wild violets, yellow, blue, and white. Where there were plenty, she'd take a small trowel from the pocket of her jacket and select one plant, wrapping its roots in wet moss, then gently sliding it into a plastic bag to take home where she'd plant it in a cool, shady corner of her own garden, along with a few bulbs of pink fawn lilies with their pale, mottled leaves and star-shaped flowers with uptilting petals. "Never pick the blossoms of these plants," she instructed. "It kills the bulbs." The very similar white calliope lilies came with the same admonition and she showed us how to gently draw the thick moss aside from around the stem and leaves of one until we found the bulb, often ten inches or more deep, so we could carefully lift one or two for transplantation. The moss, rich golden green, smelling of earth and springtime, we always replaced and patted into position when

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