Reflections on the Seventh Week of Spring – Flowers for Mother’s Day

Priscilla's Lilacs

Thursday morning, I frowned at the latest promotion in my inbox. From You Flowers wanted me to buy Mom a bouquet for Mother’s Day, and, with a special discount, arrangements started as low as twenty-one dollars. I took a deep yoga breath, glared at the email, and concluded the company should let up on folks with deceased moms.

If Mom were buried with her relatives in Girard, you’d drive up and put a bouquet on her grave.

She’s not. Her ashes are in a columbarium on Hilton Head Island. Going there involves planes, a rental car, and a hotel reservation.

She did expect flowers. You got in trouble if you forgot.

Since she died three and a half years ago, I haven’t sent her Mother’s Day flowers. I’m not in trouble, am I?

The inner voice failed to answer.

I turned to my husband who studied slips of paper spread across the sofa. “They want me to buy flowers for my mother.”

Spence picked up one of the papers, set it beside his computer, and tapped keys.

Had he heard? “I don’t suppose you could have flowers delivered to a grave.”

Without looking up, Spence said, “Sure. If you have enough money, you can do anything.”

Enough money? How much was enough, and would a florist deliver to a columbarium? The questions, buzzing through my head the rest of the morning and early afternoon, triggered thoughts of flowers on Mother’s Day. The lilac bush, which grew from cuttings off our old Cleveland Heights bush, blooms on Mother’s Day. Years ago, I’d cut lilac flowers from the old bush and brought them to Wells Wood for Priscilla, Spence’s Mom.

And white trilliums bloom in the woods on Mother’s Day. Over the years, Spence and I had taken many a Mother’s Day walk hunting for trilliums. Those I didn’t pick―too precious. Had they bloomed this year?

Mid day, I grabbed a notepad, pencil, and my camera. “Will you go for a flower walk with me, Spence?”

He tossed the last slip of paper to the floor. “Finished my road notes.” He squinted at the computer screen. “I have a half hour. Then I’m off to Cleveland―again.” He packed his computer in its carrying case and slipped into garden boots.

On the porch, we sprayed tick repellent over our clothes.

Smelling of picaridin, we walked through the field. My eyes scanned the ground to avoid stepping on violets, corn speedwell, and garter snakes. Scribbling flower names, I followed the fragrance of lilacs to the bush which towered twice as tall as us. Definitely blooming.

Robins chirped cheer-up cheerily, and a black-throated green warbler sang zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee.

We ambled down the woods path to the ridge rising from the floodplain. Turning onto a deer trail that circled the ridge, I spotted white splotches twenty feet ahead. I quickened my pace. White trillium. More than a dozen. 

 

Back in the great room, I spread my notes on the table and created two flower charts by color―wild flowers and garden flowers.

WILD FLOWERS

Pink	Yellow	Green	Blue	Purple	White
Spring Beauty	Common Cinquefoil	Fiddlehead	Corn Speedwell	Creeping Charlie	Bitter Cress
	Dandelion		Forget-me-not	Phlox	Clover
	Golden Ragwort		Violets	Violets	Dwarf Ginseng
	Violet		Virginia Bluebells	Wild Geranium	Foamflower
					Garlic Mustard
					Harbinger of Spring
					Mouse-ear Chickweed
					Trillium
					Violets
					Wild Strawberry

GARDEN FLOWERS

Pink	Yellow & Orange	Green	Blue	Purple	White
English Daisy	Pansy	Trillium	Forget-me-not	Grape Hyacinth	Apple
			Pansy	Lilacs	Blueberry
				Pansy	Cherry
					Cranberry
					Solomon’s Seal
					Strawberry

Spence gathered his gear, stepped outside, and locked the door behind him.

I stared at the flower charts. Mother Nature had done her part. Maybe I could too―if it’s possible to send flowers to a niche in a columbarium.

After an internet search, I tapped in the numbers to call the First Presbyterian Church of Hilton Head. “Certainly you can order flowers for your mother. We’ll put them by your mother for you. But tell the florist to deliver the arrangement to the reception area by four o’clock tomorrow. We aren’t open Saturday.”

Studying the list of local Hilton Head florists, I started with Island Flowers―the best rated and the closest to the church. I got an answering machine which directed me to their website. Disappointed I couldn’t explain the columbarium to a real person, I found the website. So many choices. I picked a bouquet of daisies with pink roses, typed in the church’s address, and clicked on Friday’s date for delivery. The computer wouldn’t accept my delivery date. I selected several dates, even some in November 2019. The computer wouldn’t take my order for any day.

I called Branches and got a busy signal. Five times.

White Violets Growing in Maple Trunk

The number for Island Flowers connected me to From You Flowers. If they could deliver by four o’clock tomorrow, I’d go with them. A woman with a soft voice and thick Oriental accent answered the phone. I had as much trouble understanding her with my old ears as she did understanding my American accent.

“Can you deliver the flowers by four o’clock tomorrow?”

“That’s a good question. I need some information first.”

On the third attempt to answer her first question, I resorted to spelling. “D . . . O . . . R . . . O . . . T . . . H . . . Y.”

“Oh, Dorothy.”

“Yes. Will you be able to deliver the flowers tomorrow by four?”

“We’ll see. I need some more information first.”

Twenty minutes later, after explaining several times I wanted the Pink and Pretty bouquet, not Pretty in Pink which wasn’t a choice on the internet, we settled on a forty dollar price. Then she said, “Okay. That will be delivered Tuesday. How would you like to pay?”

I hung up.

Flowers by Sue came next in my calling spree. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Sue said in a voice as tragic as if Mom had just died in my arms and, sobbing, I carried her body to Sue. “I can’t. We’re out of flowers. Everyone is in the same boat. It’s Mother’s Day. No one’s accepting any more orders.”

No one? I stared at Mum’s the Word’s phone number. They got the lowest rating of all the florists on the island. If anyone had flowers left, they would. I called.

“Can do,” a cheery voice said. “But I don’t know what flowers we’ll have left. You’ll have to buy Artist Choice. It’s a minimum charge of seventy dollars with twelve for delivery and six for tax.”

“Eighty-eight dollars?” Now I knew how much was enough to get flowers delivered to a columbarium. “How will I know what the flowers look like?”

“You won’t, unless you go to the church and see them. I don’t know what they will be. There are so many orders in front of you.” She gave the news as if thinking of a bonus she’d get from charging an outrageous price for a nosegay to assuage the conscience of guilt-ridden offspring. “They will be pretty, though.”

“I’ll think about it and call back tomorrow―if I decide to buy the flowers.”

Eight-eight dollars for pot luck flowers from a mediocre florist, and I wouldn’t know what they looked like?

Mom did like flowers, and she did expect to be recognized on Mother’s Day. But having grown up in the Great Depression, her ashes would spontaneously combust if I went for that deal. I didn’t want to put Mother’s Day worshipers in danger.

Friday morning From you Flowers sent another promotion for Mother’s Day flowers. With glee, I dispatched the ad to the trash. And while Spence tending his tomato plants in the hoop house, I squished across the wet grass to the lilac bush.

A catbird scolded and flew away.

I jumped, grabbed a branch, and pulled it down to cut through its thin wood with kitchen scissors. Pruning sheers would have worked easier, but I was on a mission and didn’t fetch them. With a fistful of wet, perfume-exuding lilacs, I put the flowers in a pan of water in the kitchen sink and headed out again―to the woods.

At the grassy knoll above Deer Creek, I searched for fresh violet faces with no bug bites. A low, rasping call drew my eyes to the creek. A merganser duck with a rusty frill on the back of its head and neck paddled upstream. After uttering a few more of its raspy quacks, it beat its wings and flew upstream―still quacking. I watched it fly in wonder. Shouldn’t it be mating in Canada by now?

When the duck vanished, I continued my hunt. White, yellow, purple, and blue violets. Phlox. Puffy, white wild ginseng blossoms. When I couldn’t hold any more flowers in my hand, I trudged back to the log house.

Inside I snipped and arranged. Lilacs for Spence’s Mom. Two mini-bouquets for mine―purple phlox with the white wild ginseng in one vase and multicolored violets in the other. I set the vases on the empty wood burning stove.

At Wells Wood, flowers symbolize Mother’s Day.

Happy Mother’s Day, Priscilla and Dot.

Mom's Phlox and Wild Ginseng