Sibling Assignment #192: The Black-eyed Susan Plant Endured

Christy assigned this Sibling Assignment.

What flowers evoke strong memories with you? Share those memories.

Christy's post is here and here is Carol's.

Back in the spring of 1995, with the help of Terrie B., I started planting flowers around the house in Eugene I now lived in alone after a marital dissolution. I never liked how lousy the grass grew in either the front or back yard and I went to work rather haphazardly digging up areas of lawn and planting a variety of flowers. I tried to consult gardening books and magazines for planning ideas, but I thought they all looked too planned and for some unknown reason, I wanted my yard and my flowers to look unplanned. So, I broke rules of garden planning, putting in tall plants where short ones should go, regarding the back of the front yard as the front, when looked at from the house, and the front, when looked at from the house, as the back; and, I suppose tried, as much as anything, to plant a half-assed meadow, but, really, it was just an increasing number of flowers coming out of the ground in artless fashion.

Along each side of the sidewalk leading from the porch to the front public sidewalk, I planted the herbs and flowers Ophelia mentions in her mad speech in Hamlet. This was exactly the wrong place to plant, say, rosemary, but other things worked pretty well.

The following spring, in 1996, I continued this project. I began digging up the strip of lawn between the front sidewalk and the street and planting flowers there. By that time, I had started to favor some flowers over others -- I came to really enjoy lilies and daisies. Shasta daisies were part of the yard when I bought the house and my love for them moved me to plant some Black-eyed Susans.

Dad died on June 1st of 1996 and I had come to Kellogg about three weeks earlier to help out as we cared for him at home as he died. This meant I had to leave behind all my spring plantings, but another good friend, Ellen E., helped me immeasurably while I was gone and watered my flowers and cared for them.

I had a Black-eyed Susan plant close to Madison St. and it flourished all summer long in the heat, thanks to Ellen's care, and thanks to my attention when I returned. Like all my flowers, I fed the Black-eyed Susan regularly, watered it almost daily, and maybe it benefited from my love for this plant.

Remarkably, long after other flowers in my yard began to diminish and die in the fall, the Black-eyed Susan hung on. As I remember, we didn't have a frost that fall until late in November -- it might even have been early December -- and even though the temperatures dipped and even as the days grew shorter, this Black-eyed Susan continued to smile, continued to bring me cheer for a couple of months beyond what I had expected.

This spring, as the Deke and I contemplated what to plant in our new back yard, I had already decided that I wanted Black-eyed Susans and so I bought some starters out in Pine Creek and now they are flourishing, giving the planter that Dad built years ago a fresh sense of good cheer. I doubt these Black-eyed Susans will last until Thanksgiving, but as long as they are thriving, they will remind me of my early days of growing flowers, my gratitude to Terrie B. and Ellen E. for all their help, and of the small miracle of the long life of the Black-eyed Susans in 1996.