John Pepin
“It’s been a long time, where have all the flowers gone?”
Pete Seeger
In my memory, a hazy, fragmented image that fades with age, I recall our middle school students marching single file down the sidewalk.
We left the large, guarded perimeter of the brick-and-stone schoolhouse (keeping watch with the face of an owl-like clocktower) and walked a block and a half east and three blocks north.
Arriving at our destination, we found ourselves standing in front of a greenhouse tucked away in a residential area along one of the busiest streets in the old town.
I remember it being warm and muggy as I walked between the rows of plants in different stages of growth, and in addition to the humidity, I recall the smell of potting soil and the pretty greenness of all the plants growing.
We set out that day with seeds and a small, netted ball of planting soil about the size of a Duncan yo-yo.
The seeds were from flowers such as marigolds, zinnias and snapdragons, which we would grow in the cups over the next few weeks.
In the end, we brought flowers home from school.
Back then, that meant our mothers. Fathers might be farmers, but it wasn’t commonly assumed, especially in the 1960s, that one would be a florist.
The phrase had a totally different meaning then: San Francisco, music, LSD and other drugs, mellow youth subculture, and free love, baby, yeah, that sort of thing.
Today, whenever I smell the potting soil or visit the greenhouse, I am always reminded of my middle school field trip and the experiences I had that day.
For me, this notion of affinity with soil, honesty in hard work, and ultimate reward began with watering a few annual houseplants and watching them grow and flower.
The lessons were reinforced in his own backyard.
My mother is approaching 90 and is an avid gardener.
From the time I first knew my mother, she always had a wide range of knowledge about what plant this was, where to plant that, and how to grow the many flowers and vegetables we grew on the small plots in front and behind our old two-story house.
Helping her weed, plant, water, and harvest these garden plots taught me a lot, including, perhaps most importantly, how to stop worrying about getting dirt under my fingernails.
Whenever I smell the scent of potting soil and growing plants, I am always reminded of my childhood gardening days growing up under the guidance of my mother.
I spent a lot of time in these gardens as a child and learned to love and enjoy the gardens, even though it was forced labor.
My mom recently came over from Canada and bought some plants for our current vegetable garden. Last week, I noticed a beautiful pink rose blooming on one of the trees she planted.
She said the flowers planted would help us remember her.
In that respect she was right.
I was reminded of all this yesterday as I went fishing in the woods in the sweltering heat.
Fishing conditions were poor with the sun beating down on the deepest holes, temperatures just below 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and the river dropping to shallow depths in most places.
I kept trying but in the end I didn’t catch any fish to take home.
As I walked along the shore, through and around the dense greenery of the bushes, vines and trees, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the beautiful colors all around me in the form of flowers and berries.
Pink, purple, red, yellow, orange, creamy off-white.
The blackberries hadn’t yet ripened, as they always do at this time of year, but they were olive green and hung above the brambles, waiting to ripen.
The raspberries were ripe and ready to eat. When I took a bite, the fresh, delicious flavor filled my mouth. It was delicious.
I got a seed stuck between my teeth, but I didn’t care.
In retrospect, given the poor fishing, a better use of my time would have been to stop and pick raspberries, which I could have easily filled up a gallon-sized plastic bag to take home.
There were flowers everywhere, high and low, it was an incredibly beautiful sight – it was clearly the flowering season in this forest.
Even the white of the Queen Anne’s lace seemed to pop out from the surrounding green, and there were pinkish-red blossoms on the red columbines, the deep purple and pale lavender of the wild irises that grew out of the cattail swamps, and the gold and brown of the black-eyed Susans.
Everywhere I looked there were countless flowers in bloom – in fact, I can’t remember seeing so many flowers on the bushes on any of my other trips to the forest.
At one point along the stream, a robin chick was hiding among the green leaves at my feet, and a bird flew up from my right to my left before disappearing again into the thick foliage.
Just seconds later, the second chick hopped at my feet and sprinted off into the bushes, and in the distance I heard mother robin calling to her chicks on the other side of the river to join her.
Then I saw a wild turkey poking its head out of the tall green grass beside the dirt road I was driving on.
Overhead, a young woodpecker flew from one side of the road to the other.
At the culvert outlet, dozens of chubs and shiner minnows darted about, eager to nibble at whatever dropped into the water. They turned the worms I offered them in hopes of attracting hungry trout into noodle-like bite marks.
The hole was quite deep compared to the water I had seen elsewhere during the day, but the bright sunlight shone all the way down to the bottom of the stream, making it easy to see the worms I had cast 30 feet away sink.
This is the time of year when vegetation is at its lushest, with riverbanks and roadsides lush with plants and flowers of all kinds in full bloom, making the area look like a jungle garden.
At one point, a flowering vine even grabbed my arm and fishing pole as I tried to feel my way past the invisible overgrown path with my feet.
I half expected to hear or see a tiger or some jungle cat at any moment.
While I marveled at the beautiful flowers, I also came across many plants whose names I didn’t know, highlighting major gaps in my knowledge of plant identification.
My mother had expertise in cultivated plants and vegetables, so I’m not sure it would have been much help.
In the past I have tried to tackle wildflower plant identification but the plant identification keys seem daunting to me.
However, after this trip, I am once again determined to take one of those wildflower field guides with me on my next trip to the woods.
By doing so, I will at least be able to make some progress towards learning more about the wonders blooming all around me, and perhaps I will end up wishing I had done this sooner.
Lately I’ve been moving too fast, or too slow, and somehow seem out of sync.
I wish I had found a shady, flowery meadow somewhere that day, where I could have read a book about wildflowers and relaxed while comparing the many colorful blooms around me.
Although the cool water of one of the streams I fished in felt good flowing around my feet as I waded through, it was clearly a mistake to push myself to fish today.
I sometimes think that if I were more careful in my decisions about what to do, when and where, I would achieve better results.
But what I decided to do today took me to a place where I could experience nature’s magnificent gardens up close and personal, and after the road narrowed, the number of cars I encountered reduced to just a few throughout the day.
I had the opportunity to stand under a clear blue sky and listen to the sound of the water flowing slowly and gently. I could hear the buzzing of deer, horseflies, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, and the occasional bird, but nothing else.
These situations feed my innermost being, and often I don’t even realize it’s happening.
The treatment itself is another satisfying wonder of nature.
Outdoors North is a weekly column published by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources that covers a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources in the Upper Peninsula.
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