Flowers, friendship and hope

Rosemary's vase with my tulips.

This is a little story about flowers and hope, friendship and love. I recently went through a brief period of emotional turmoil, which I'm getting over now but in the throes of it I felt absolutely awful and hopeless and even lost my appetite and five pounds, which hardly ever happens.

My neighbor Rosemary helped calm me with tea, talk, hugs, and the promise to take me to her favorite nursery and help me pick out flowers for my porch pots and a new cutting garden. (She's a green thumb and I'm not.) I was so grateful that after our second day for tea and talk I brought her some white tulips to symbolize the peace and hope she'd helped me find. That leads to the story about ...

Love and the Green Boot Vase

She put the tulips in the green boot vase shown above and said she bought the vase when she was a teen and gave it to her boyfriend's mother, who later became her mother-in-law. That was about 60 years ago, and now Rosemary's mother-in-law has passed, Rosemary and her high school sweetheart are still in love, and she has the vase again.

More flowers in a pretty pitcher on Rosemary's table.

After the story, we took off for the nursery, where she had the brilliant idea for me to buy two huge reasonably priced hanging baskets and just set them in my front porch pots instead of buying lots of little plants and making all those little holes and waiting for them to fill in.

Hope and flowers

So here I am with the two big pots and a selection of perennials for my cutting garden. ... That's where the hope comes in. Rosemary said that with perennial flowers, the saying is: "First year they sleep, second year they creep, and third year they leap." But, she added hopefully, "I know yours will leap the first year."

Feeling pleased with our purchases and enjoying the gift of a sunny day, we headed across town to one of Rosemary's favorite restaurants, where we were seated near this beautiful stained glass window ... more flowers!

Friendship and serendipity

On our way to the nursery, we missed our turn but serendipitously ended up near Trader Joe's. In we went, and I found this cheerful bunch of sunflowers (I have a sunflower theme going at home) and Rosemary was excited to find the grocery items she wanted. Tomorrow is my turn to host Sew Day with the Twisted Nut Stitchers -- four more fun friends -- and the sunflowers go perfectly with my napkin rings. So the wrong turn was actually a right turn!

 Have a colorful day!