Granny Turner loved buttercups…well…I assume she did…she had lots of them…for as long as I can remember…there were two rows going between the pecan tree and the outbuilding we called the garage…then…there were clumps and clusters scattered around the yard…like rays of sunshine popping through clouds…
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| There was a heavy frost last night...love the ice crystals... |
Like most of the old-fashioned buttercups in the south…Granny’s usually bloomed around the end of January…when there had been just enough warm days to wake them up…sometimes to find themselves dusted with snow a few days later…
Granny passed away late one Saturday night at the end of January…I’m trying to figure out the year…I think it was 1992…the year really doesn’t matter…but it frustrates me that I could forget it…and…even the exact date…
What I do remember…is that her buttercups were blooming…
I remember calling the florist at home on Sunday morning…to make my special request…then going back to her house…in the rain…picking huge armfuls…to be used in her flower arrangements…
I like to think that she smiled…when she saw the arrangements…I know the family did…it was comforting and somehow fitting to celebrate her life with her own buttercups…
Some twenty years have passed…Granny’s house is gone…the property stands empty…long since sold…
Some years…it has been mowed…and the buttercups are easily visible…and pickable…I still have to have a bouquet…
This isn’t one of those years…this year…the pecan tree has fallen…and the rest of the yard has followed it into disrepair…tall grass and broken limbs would make it difficult to even see the once stately rows of buttercups…much less…pick a few…
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| Buttercups...in all that brush! |
But…these are Granny’s buttercups…they evidently have her determined spirit…AKA…stubborn…and can be seen peeking their stately yellow heads through the debris…for all the world to see…and as a sign for me…
Even when things look bleak…even when there seems to be no way…there will still be buttercups…and they will still find a way to bloom…
Jane
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