By: Marlene Oxender
Montpelier, Ohio
There are thousands of species of flowers on this earth, and I made it to adulthood not knowing much about any of them.
It was likely the same for many of us – as we grew up, we saw tulips magically appear in our yards each spring. We admired their form, color, and fragrance, but we were not allowed to pick them.
The grass in our backyards was soft with clover and little violets; dandelions dotted the yards where we played.
The arrival of spring was always a good thing – a literal breath of fresh air. Lilacs bloomed on cue, announcing that springtime was here.
My childhood dream of living in a home where flowers return on their own every year eventually came true. I didn’t know what a peony was until one bloomed on my own property. Now daffodils and hyacinths make their cameo appearance each spring. And crocuses – who knew?
The first time I found a pansy blooming in the cold December ground, I spoke to him as if he were human and asked what he was doing.
He knew I was happy to see him, and he didn’t stand a chance of remaining where he was. I brought him inside, placed him in a vintage perfume-bottle vase, and took pictures. He quickly became a cherished memory.
When I was a child, our oldest brother Ed would take us for rides in the country in his 1970 blue Dodge Charger. It was fun to load up in the car and see what we could find to do.
A few miles outside of Edgerton, on Clarksville Road, a small herd of cows grazed behind a fence near the road, and this was one of our stopping points.
There we were – a carful of siblings. Watching cows. Our youngest brother Stevie, who had Down syndrome, helped us appreciate the moment.
I also remember going to Herman Park where we could run on hills. We gathered dandelions by the handful, knowing there was a glass mustard jar at home that would make the perfect vase.
Those childhood bouquets are a reminder that the same flowers treasured by some are looked upon by others as weeds. But the mighty dandelion knows its worth. It knows its rich history. It knows how photogenic it can be.
I recently read that Crayola retired its Dandelion crayon in 2017 to make room for a new shade of blue. But they brought the color back due to popular demand, and it can now be found in the standard 64-count crayon boxes.
How fitting that the crayon named after a perennial flower has returned, just as perennials do. Among the papers in my parents’ estate, I found little notebooks and advertisements from seed companies – little scraps of paper from long ago that once belonged to my Grandma and Grandpa Imm. I was reminded of how much our ideas about what belongs in a yard have changed over time.
Clover was once commonly included in grass-seed mixtures and accepted as part of a healthy lawn. As herbicides became more widely used, clover came to be treated as a weed.
The question of what belongs in a yard, and what gets called a weed, has a history of its own. If clover is drought-resistant and stays green while grass turns brown, what’s not to love?
It’s a little perennial that adds nitrogen to the soil and provides food for the little crawly things and stripey things that belong in our intricate ecosystem.
Everything in the world is interconnected. Everything has a place and a purpose. When bees do what they were designed to do, plants reproduce, crops grow, animals are fed, and life happens.
Maybe there is a lesson here in doing less, in leaving some things untouched and letting the world do what it knows to do. Perhaps we could look at our yards the way we did when we were children – not as problems to control, but as places full of gifts.
And maybe, if we look closely enough, we’ll find worthiness in things we didn’t even know we had – the same quiet worth the dandelion carries each time it returns.
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Marlene Oxender is a writer, speaker, and author. She writes about growing up in the small town of Edgerton, her ten siblings, the memorabilia in her parents’ estate, and her late younger brother, Stevie Kimpel, who was born with Down syndrome. Her three published books, Picket Fences, Stevie, and “Grandma, You Already Am Old!” are available on Amazon. Marlene can be reached at mpoxender@gmail.com