Every year, without fail, my family has planted a flower garden in our front yard. Zinnias, hollyhocks and four-o’clocks are meticulously positioned in rows and guarded from rabbits or other creatures lurking in the shadows. My favorite flowers were the four-o’clocks, also known as marvel-of-Peru. These flowers are closed during the day, but open during dawn and the evening.
Even though gardening was a routine in my life, I always dreaded the days that my parents would make me and my brothers pull out weeds from the soil. We would try to get out of doing it, but the weeding was enforced by the threat of going inside and cleaning. Even though I still avoid weeding when I visit home, I would not take back those days in my childhood. Those days bonded my family together. And by the end of the summer, it was always gratifying to see our garden overflowing with flowers. It was not uncommon for strangers to stop, admire the flowers and ask for seeds when the season ended.
When the flowers had lost their shine and began to die out, us kids were sent out with little bowls to collect the seeds and sort them into their flower colors. This was not easy to do, as most of the flowers had already closed and you could not see which color they were. However, it was always rewarding when the snow thawed come springtime and we began digging up the ground once more to create a little beauty in our little world.