Our magnolia tree is bursting with blooms this year. (By the way, in my mind the word magnolia needs to be pronounced slowly and deliberately, with a southern drawl...mag-nowl-ya.) Each morning my husband cuts a fresh blossom to grace our fireplace mantle. The fragrance wafts through the entire house.
Various blooms have played an important part in our married life...a romantic part. I still have, saved in an old Bible, the first tiny bouquet of wild flowers that Dave gave to me on our college campus when we began our courtship. They are brittle and brown, wrapped in their original rubber band, just as he simply presented them to me over 38 years ago.
Part of our honeymoon trip was spent camping. One morning I awoke to find a huge bouquet of wild flowers adorning our picnic table, along with lovely white stones spelling out the phrase "I LOVE YOU." Isn't that romantic?
Dave knows how I look forward to the Texas wildflowers each spring. Early on in our marriage, he started a wildflower tradition. He would always phone me at his first sighting of an Indian paintbrush, the earliest of the wildflowers to bloom. And then he always brought me the first paintbrush he could get to safely. This year when my mom was desperately ill and I was staying with her in Conroe, I thought this would be, understandably, the first year Dave's tradition would be broken. However, one day he showed up, grinning, at my mom's door, having driven 1 1/2 hours out of his way on a busy workday, to bring to me not just the one little bloom, but a whole little pot of paintbrush posies.
Remembering the roses or the camellias and gardenias that Dave has cut from our yard through the years brings a smile to my heart. He's always liked to choose the container to display the flowers and often arranges them himself. With their daddy's coaching, our children learned to pick little wildflower spider-wart and primrose blooms for their mommy. Once Dave came running for me, as a cactus we possessed for years suddenly delighted us with a rich, red bloom. That plant made a lovely centerpiece on our dinner table.
Thank you Honey, for the "Romance of the Blooms" throughout the years!
