Favorite Flowers and Stories

Only a few more hours until the midnight deadline for my spring giveaway of the cute little Willow Tree Gardening Angel and books. I’ll contact the winners in a couple of days via e-mail and then announce the winners here on Sunday’s post.

It was fun hearing about your favorite flowers and vegetables. I heard about a lot more flowers than I did vegetables. Guess more of us grow those flowers or have fond memories of our mothers and grandmothers growing flowers. Many of you said that certain flowers were your favorites because they reminded you of someone in your family. What a sweet way to be remembered. I was surprised at the variety of flower favorites. Thirty-eight different kinds of flowers were mentioned. Roses came in as the most mentioned but not by a lot. Eight people claimed them as favorites. Daisies actually came in second with four mentions or six mentions if you include Shasta daisies with the field daisies. Then iris and lilies were next. But most of the flowers were mentioned only once. I loved the variety. That’s what makes the world go around, isn’t it?

I did note that those who mentioned iris had some memories of those who had first introduced them to the iris flowers. Linda M shared one of those stories.

My favorite gardening story is my collection of iris I call my “Granny” Iris and “Mom” Iris. My best memory of my Granny (my mom’s mother) are the bouquets of irises she would pick and send home with me. Since she lived in Arkansas and my family lived in Missouri I would hold that special bouquet, wrapped in wet paper towels in a plastic bag, all the way back home. My mom said I would go to sleep holding tightly to those flowers and never once dropped them. They were so precious to me. I now have some of those iris in my yard as well as plantings from some iris that came from my mom’s yard. My Granny has gone to heaven but her iris live on in my memory and in my yard!

Thank you for sharing that, Linda. What a special memory for you!

A few of you shared your favorite vegetable to grow. I’m sure most of you can guess which one came in first even though it’s officially a fruit, they say. We still think of the tomato as a vegetable and we love eating the ones that grow and are sun-ripened in our gardens. Yum! The tomato was mentioned eight times out of sixteen named favorites. Okra and zucchini came in second with two mentions each. Zucchini grows like crazy in most gardens so good that it was a favorite. Here’s Susan H’s story about why it’s her favorite vegetable. Maybe the only veggie she has any fondness for.

I’m ashamed to say that I’m not a lover of vegetables (and at my age, I don’t think I will “grow into it” now even though my parents still insist I might), but one veggie I always looked forward to every summer while growing up in Michigan was zucchini! I think I first developed a taste for zucchini because my wise father, knowing I wasn’t a veggie eater, served zucchini to me sliced, battered and deep-fried. To this day, that is still my favorite (and least healthy) way to eat zucchini. But it had the benefit of eventually getting me to eat zucchini in other ways, too, such as sauteed in butter or cooked in marinara sauce. I even love zucchini lasagna. My parents were disappointed to find that loving zucchini didn’t lead me to love other green vegetables, but they always made sure we had plenty of zucchini growing in our garden every summer.

Great story, Susan. I have to admit that zucchini bread is my favorite way to eat zucchini. 🙂

Thank you all for sharing your favorites. I’ll share some more stories and some of the varieties of favorite flowers next time.

As always I appreciate you reading my words and good luck in the drawing!