The Delphinium

There was this field way out on west 120th in Broomfield, when it was a sorry-looking two-laner.  Abandoned farmland with giant for sale signs back a ways disappeared completely when you suddenly came upon this field of purply-periwinklish-blue-tones-with-lavender-and-the-slightest-whisper-of-pinkish-white spiked clusters of flowers.

I had no idea what they were.  I had never owned a flower or bought one at that time, didn’t garden and still despised my only gardening experience which included some weeding and picking snap beans for my parents as a girl.

But weekly, when we’d deliver Tara and Stephanie to a small church youth group that seemed way out in the country, there they were, swaying in just the most mystical-Monet colors.  It was like looking right at an impressionistic painting –  A whole field of these soft, beautiful flowers.

This is just a google image, but reminds me of those days…

Not long later, I realized my neighbor had the same growing all along her back fence.  “They are Delphinium,” she told me.  “They just seed themselves each year.”  And I watched daily as they grew and the slender stalks became so heavy with the flora some would topple right over, but for the most part, they crowded together and held each other up and reached high and then higher and the landscape was free and blue.  Seriously breathtaking.

That field has since, some 15 years later, become a strip mall, which is not nearly so beautiful.  I moved away from the neighbor whose delphinium happily waved across the fence to me daily.

Lowe’s

I just bought 3 clearance pots for this postage-stamp-sized yard of a garden I have.  And busyness has caused me to neglect them woefully, leaving them in these inadequate pots on the concrete patio for days…weeks?   But doggone if those poor root-bound specimens aren’t blooming in total glory for me anyway.

On my patio this morning.  Waiting to be attended to.

In heaven, I shall be found walking through fields of Delphinium quite regularly.  Meet me there!

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