My Mom loved flowers – any kind of flowers – but mostly she liked wildflowers.  You know, the kind you’d find on the side of the road or in the woods, or peaking out from behind rocks in the mountains, leaning into the breeze on an ocean coastline.  The unexpected, the often missed, the little known.  The ones you just catch a glimpse of, that you have to buy a book from the local bookseller to identify. Though we usually bought her a flats of petunias for Mother’s Day, perhaps her favorite gifts would be the grubby handfuls of flowers we’d bring home from the woods where we played as kids.

I remembered memories of our tramps in the woods yesterday as I drove on our neighborhood country roads.  I passed a bunch of trillium in full bloom.  Mom especially enjoyed these flowers because they were (in those days) so rare.  Yesterday, thinking of her, I turned around and went back for a photo.

And I’ve also noticed that  the marsh marigolds are blooming along the swampy stream beds.  Once when I was a pre-teen I brought her a bucket or two filled with these plants, dug up from the bogs along the lake we lived on.  We planted them along our own shoreline, but I don’t remember whether or not they flourished there.  I do remember how happy I was dragging home the heavy, bog splattered buckets, my legs black with wet peat, arms aching, back straining, bringing them home to my Mom who was delighted, as always.

So this Mother’s Day morning Katie and I went out in search of a photo of a marsh marigold.  It was 36 degrees, but the sun was shining as I scrambled down a bank to a small but overflowing stream.  Mom would have loved it, there were golden flowers galore.  But a chickadee, a titmouse and a robin were very upset that I had invaded their own mother’s day celebrations, so I snapped my pictures as quickly as I could, then returned to Katie who was waiting in the car.

So Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.    I’d send a bucket of marsh marigolds to you, but FTD doesn’t deliver in heaven.