by Scott Kessman

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

A flower is an object of innocence and frailty, but with strong roots and an unyielding desire to grow. The same could be said of ourselves, as children. Perhaps that is why when we partake of the act of gardening, our hearts and minds are transported to a place that is free of the stressful problems and worries we tend to accumulate as adults. For a short while, we are as children again, and all that exists is the young flower in our hands, waiting to be planted, nurtured, and grown, itself a beautiful child.

When I was young boy living at home with my parents, I was not interested in gardening. But I knew that the arrival of spring meant that the garden centers would be receiving palette upon palette of vast arrays of flowers, ready to be snatched up by the masses, soon to be decorating lawns and window boxes all across town.

It was always the weekend after Mother's Day that my own mother and father would drive to one of these local garden centers or a farm stand on a nearby country road. There, they would spend a few hours browsing and selecting various flowers for the yard, and sometimes a vegetable plant or two, usually tomatoes or zucchini. (Neither of which I liked). They would return home with the back seat of the car and most of the trunk filled with many varieties of colorful flowers, as well as a few enormous bags of potting soil and gardening soil.

While this was undoubtedly an exciting time for my mother, it certainly wasn't one of my favorite moments. This was because I would then be called upon by my father to assist with the unloading of all the flowers and heavy bags of soil, and instructed as to where to place them in the yard. Had that been the end of the unpleasant task, I might not have found it so bothersome. However, the small chore typically grew to be a much larger one, in which I would be forced to spend hours assisting my mother during the days of gardening that followed.

It fell upon me to empty the potting soil into what seemed like an limitless supply of window boxes, ceramic pots, and additional planters shaped like animals or abstract designs. I would till soil in the small patch of the yard reserved for the vegetables. I spent an eternity placing the various planters around the yard, sometimes moving the same ones repeatedly, according to the whims of my parents as they debated where the planters might look best.

During much of this time, my mother would stand at a small table in the center of the yard. One by one, she would remove

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