by C McNamara

Created on: August 12, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

As I sat on the cold cement steps of my front porch, the late winter sun battled its way through the clouds, trying its very best to accommodate me and tempt me to ignore the hard cold surface beneath my buttocks and stay just a little longer. I complied, my gaze resting on the clay pot shaped to look like half a tree log. It was filled with small fronds of bulbs poking their new flower heads through the soil, on their eventual journey to become little blue star flowers. I remember planting them in that pot with my mum, maybe 15 or 20 years ago now. And still they grow strong and vigorous, a yearly reminder of my beautiful mother and her imaginative approach to gardening.

That was what my mother called them; little blue stars. She didn't go in for latin names or even the commonly accepted names; she made her own names up for the various bulbs, shrubs, annuals and perennials, putting her own imagination to work and encouraging us kids to do the same thing. There were the yellow-trumpets, snow-bells, tea-cups, ladies-fingers, purple-spots, spider-lings, frilly-aprons, irish-lads, weeping-widows, red-soldiers and angel-faces just to name a few. In our sizeable front garden, Mum knew where each of them grew, what time of year she could expect them to visit, where the first flowers might be found and how long they would last.

Mum would take us for walks, pointing out her flower-friends, welcoming them or admonishing them if they were a little late to show their faces. We loved these walks, they took us out of the house and into a real-life fantasy land where my mother was graceful queen to her plantling subjects. She sang and danced and we had the best childhood one could ask for.

I often tried to outsmart her. I sometimes stole into the garden in the early morning searching for a new bud of promise. I would race back to the house when I found one and Mum would nod and praise me, but I always felt that deep down, she knew already, of course she did, she was queen.

Of course that was many years ago now. Us kids are all grown up and dispersed around the globe, and Mum now resides in a nursing home, afflicted with late stage dementia and declining every day. Each time I visit I try to take her a small bunch of flowers. Flowers, music and food are the only things she now appears to enjoy, while the rest of life slips sadly by.

I miss my mum so much, I miss her attitude to life, I miss her singing and I miss her stories. She introduced me to her magical plant world and I have taken her messages into mine. I don't have children yet but I have made a promise to my mother that when that time comes, I will use her approach to introduce the magic of plant life to my wee ones.

Bye mum. X

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