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Very out of place and out of season is this photo of bee balm growing by our barn. Perennials like these, or coneflowers and black-eyed susan, are my favorite choices to plant around the farmyard, because I'm LAZY. A flower that grows on its own each year is very much to my liking!Bee balm is a wildflower of the mint family, and has a strong signature scent. Whenever I walk by them, I'm compelled to touch the leaves and enjoy the aroma. Mm-m......I can't wait for summertime when they are in bloom again!!
Yes, this photo is out of place in time.......
Yesterday, I had a visitor, a distant relative of Husband's. I had contacted her to see if she wanted copies of some of the old family photos we've accumulated after cleaning out Father-in-law's house.
I don't know her very well, so it was fun to chat and get acquainted. She's several years younger than me, and still has children in grade school. Her husband is a pastor. At one point in our conversation, and prompted maybe by the fact that we were looking at old photos, she said she sometimes feels she was born at the wrong time in history. She would rather have lived in a time when moral standards were higher.
Although doubting humanity is much worse than its ever been, I nodded in agreement. Later on, her words took me back into my own past to around age 12, when I dearly wished to have been born at a different time. After reading all of Laura Ingalls' books, I was certain that life would have been much more fun and interesting back in her time in the 1800's. For some reason I remember thinking this especially one summer when my job at home was to paint wooden fences and the trim on the hoghouse. I would stand on the ladder and gaze off into the distance towards the woods and the river and dream of living as a pioneer in a log house. My naive 12-year-old mind imagined that to be the greatest thing in the world. Apparently, the implications of no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no grocery stores, no cars, etc., did not enter my head.
I mentioned these silly notions to my grandmother one time, and she shook her head and said, "Be very glad you live now." She would often sigh and say, "Oh, my, we had to work so hard back then." She would talk about the huge gardens and orchards and the long, tiring days spent canning every fruit and vegetable in sight, plus canning beef, too! She had no wish to return to those days.
However........I truly would like to return to the summer day when this bee balm photo was taken! Or go forward in time to the future warmth of summer and the scent of bee balm in the air once again.
Backward, or forward.......which shall it bee...... and it makes no difference, teeheehee!
Have a wonderful day!!!
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4 comments:
I've actually never heard of bee balm! I love a fragrant plant though.
Oh, I so wanted to live back in the time of Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was growing up too! (never mind how hard it was to live back then, and how much work it was. I romanticized the whole thing!)
My mother-in-law who still lives in the home place by the dairy barn, was a married woman with two or three children before she got electricity.
If she wanted chicken, she had to catch one. If she wanted bread, she baked it.
She is so interesting to talk to. Trust me, she does NOT look back on that time as romantic.
One thing though. She worked hard all day long to feed her growing family and husband, mind the garden, the chickens, the house, wash laundry (she had to heat water on a wood burning stove and scrape lye soap into it to wash clothes, in august, while pregnant--no she does NOT miss it)
But, she said no one ever questioned whether a woman should stay home. It took a man working as hard as he could on the farm and a women working as hard as she could in and around the house to make a home run. It was a true partnership.
Hi, Kacey and Mary,
Thanks for stopping by.
We have a tiny prairie spot out in our field, with alot of "horsemint" growing there. Its another form of bee balm.....the blooms are lavendar and also have that wonderful herby scent.
Yes, its good to hear the perspectives of those who lived in the "old days"!
Oh, I love bee balm! And it is so much easier living in the time that we are living, even though it's nice romanticising what it would be like in a past era. Much more difficult, though. Especially for women. And to think that as little as 50 years ago, women didn't even have the rights that we have now.
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