Flowers, and more flowers

Tomorrow I will be traveling with a group from Enterprise to the Atlanta Flower show at the World Congress Center. I have been to flower shows in other large cities, including the big one in Charlotte, NC. I am always amazed at how they can fill large buildings with so many beautiful flower designs and exhibits. I can hardly wait to go.

You see, I am a flower junkie. Even fake flowers are pretty to me. This started at a very early age. My grandmother had beautiful cabbage roses and they smelled so good. And the sweet smelling sweet shrub that she would allow us to pick and tie one of the little maroon colored blooms in the corner of a handkerchief that we could put in our pocket and take out occasionally to rub across our nose and smell the sweet smelling sweet shrub.

One of my favorite times of the year when I was young was to go to the woods to search for wild violets in the early spring. There were many little white violets near the creeks, but our goal was to find large, taller purple violets. We would pick a handful to bring home to our mother who put them in a tea cup filled with water.

When we retired in 1996 and moved to the farm where I grew up, I started looking for violets. In 2002, we cleared some land near a stream where I remembered seeing large purple violets, and the next spring I came upon this big bed of those beautiful little flowers. Immediately I took photos to send to my sisters to let them know what I had discovered.