Transporting us to the past
They are not flowers.
Not really.
Queen Anne’s lace.
Clover.
Wild daisy.
Chicory.
Black-eyed Susan.
Birdsfoot trefoil.
Oh, they look like flowers, for sure.
Wildflowers, most people would say.
Even weeds, to some.
But that’s not what they really are.
What they really are, is time machines.
And they take me back, without fail, to summers past. Summers in the south. Summers along the paths and dirt roads of central Virginia.
Summers on my grandparents’ farm.
As one of roughly 8,462 kids in my family,1 I never had the kind of vacations as a kid that other families might have had. We had no beach trips, no camping trips, no Niagara Falls and definitely no hotels or motels.
There were just too many of us for that, so our vacations were at one place and one only: the Farm. In capital letters. Owned by my mother’s oldest brother, my Uncle Bill, and occupied starting in 1950 by my grandparents Clay and Opal (Robertson) Cottrell.
Every year, when school let out, my folks would load the car up in New Jersey and head south. My father would train it back north to work, but the rest of us? We didn’t head back north until school was about to start again.
(A side note: this often caused issues with our southern cousins, whose school year ended in May and started in August, when schools in the north didn’t end until June and didn’t start until after Labor Day. They were Not Happy when we were still at the Farm when they had to go back to school. We were Not Happy when they were already at the Farm in May and we were sweating in un-air-conditioned classrooms in mid-to-late June.)
There are so many things I remember about those summers at the farm.
But nothing takes me back there, instantly, without fail, and no matter where I encounter them, than the time machines of roadside wildflowers.
Abundant along the backroads, paved and mostly not, of Fluvanna County, Virginia.
More than abundant everywhere on the farm.
We gathered them in bouquets for our mothers and grandmother.
We weaved them into crowns and chains.
We decorated our hair… and our cousins’ hair.2
It isn’t that there weren’t any flowers at home in Colorado or New Jersey or California where we lived from time to time. It’s just that the more manicured suburban subdivisions where we spent our school years ran more to roses and geraniums and the like.
But the wildflowers of the roadside… they are the time machines of the mind.
The flowers … bringing to mind the stories… of my summers past.
Summers in the south.
Summers along the paths and dirt roads of central Virginia.
Summers on my grandparents’ farm.
NOTES
Images: JG Russell; black-eyed susan by Jason Hollinger, chicory by lmmahood, and daisy by Jina Lee, via Wikimedia Commons
Great memories, Judy. We, too, had too many children for vacations. Wished we had a farm to spend summers at.
Such great memories. I grew up on a dirt road lined every summer with thousands of these flowers. I constantly regret that my own kids don’t have that same experience.
Long story short, my surname *might* be based on the Dutch name for this plant.
What a beautiful piece, Judy. It makes me think, “Heck with the GPS. You are writting poetry.”
Or both. 🙂
I was the youngest of five children and we would spent our summers across Lake Ponchartrain with my grandparents (thanks for Grandparents). Daily walks to the spring fed ice cold river to swim. It was such a difference from my home town of New Orleans known for her steamy hot summers and mosquitoes. Loved picking the clover and wildflowers to make crowns and bracelets. Oh the memories!
Judy,
Lovely story. I was the oldest of only three, growing up in Seattle. We went on tent camping trips for the two and then three weeks of my dad’s vacation. We went as far as we could in that time, always in the West. We all remember the only time we spent two nights in the same campground! My mother loved wildflowers, so we looked, and learned names, but she wouldn’t let us pick them. Because we’d move on the next morning, we’d have to throw them out. Better to leave them on the roadside so others could appreciate them too.
So the roadside flowers I grew up with weren’t identical to the ones you knew. But I’ve lived in the Midwest, and as far south as St. Louis and Florida before returning to Seattle 20 years ago. So the only flower you pictured that’s unfamiliar is the trefoil. When I lived in rural Indiana I remember making bouquets of Queen Anne’s Lace, Black Eyed Susans, and bright orange Butterfly Weed that I collected from the roadsides on my walks. A beautiful, bright combination of colors and shapes. I tried adding Chicory, but soon discovered that it wilted the minute I cut it. Back in the city now, I do miss wildflowers!
Doris
I can sure understand missing the wildflowers; they are music to my soul whenever I see them even today.
Lovely. Queen Anne’s Lace takes me back to Mississippi circa 1962. (Lots of bad things happening in MS then, don’t get me wrong!)
I love, love wild flowers! By the way, I grew up with six brothers and no sisters!
I “only” have five brothers — and two sisters.
Among other crops, my parents grew tomatoes commercially. Nothing takes me back more than the aroma produced by crushing/rubbing tomato leaves with my fingers.
I will forever remember the first day each summer when my grandmother would let us go down to the tomato patch in the garden… salt shaker in hand.
Texas has a short spell for its wildflowers, about a month in springtime of the year. Bluebonnets, indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susan’s. But out of these ol memory banks pops up a vision of a little boy with dirty hands holding a fistful of these flowers up to his Grandma. Then her saying “Oh, these are beautiful”…I watch as she puts them in a vase, sets them right in the middle of kitchen table. The old barn, milking the cows, gathering the eggs for Grandma and then there were all the cousins…great times with 350 acres to play on, just watch out for rattlesnakes.
And those bouquets could be scraggly pathetic excuses for flowers and the grandmothers would still say, “Oh, these are beautiful”… and lovingly put them in the vase in the middle of the kitchen table.
When my mother was young, an uncle would come around, taking the children on berry-picking expeditions. Strawberries, blackberries, and that lone precious black-raspberry bush. Other families did the same, but the owners of the land were not happy about what they viewed as theft. Some even took out newspaper ads prohibiting this practice on their land.
After my grandfather’s funeral, the church ladies fed us. I will never forget the 2-layer white sheetcake with crushed wild strawberries between the layers. Nummmm!
Okay, now I’m hungry. For berries.
This reminds me SO much of the children’s book, _The Relatives Came_, by Cynthia Rylant. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it!
Loved your blog post about summer vacations, especially the part, “I never had the kind of vacations as a kid that other families might have had.” Neither did I. As a kid, I sometimes felt jealous of my friends who went to beaches and to Disneyland. But it was always short-lived. The minute we hit our destination, after a long 2-day road trip from New Mexico to Montana, I couldn’t wait to see my cousins. And to this day, those road trips and time spent with my cousins are some of my happiest memories.