The Elder Statesman

By Bill Duncan
The View From Here 

To be honest with you, as a gardener I am not much on flowers. I am a vegetable gardener pure and simple. They tell me that some flowers are edible, but they don’t seem very appetizing to me. Not even a Zucchini bloom.

Oh, I know, having been reminded many times by my wife, that vegetables are food for the body, but flowers are food for the soul.

I  have never seen soul brothers cooking up a mess of nasturtiums.

Alongside my driveway in the front of my house is a sign with arrows pointing in two directions — to the front flowers to the back vegetables. I garden inside a deer fenced area larger than a city residential lot. She putters in the front.

I am yet to understand why she and a friend, Viviana Cervi-Skinner,

who volunteered to help her landscape the front, planted a pink Camellia out front when everyone knows pink Camellias mean "longing for a man," yet they did not plant one Sweet William. She sorta made up for that longing with her other Camellia plantings, including a white one that means "you’re adorable," and a red that means "you’re a flame in my heart."

Any time I bring in a cornucopia of vegetables from my garden, I know I have won her heart. And, after all there is a single rose in her garden that has survived the black mud. It is a red Rose and everyone knows it means "I love you."

Plus, there are scads of gladiolus which mean "love at first sight."

There is a bed of Chrysanthemums and the reds mean "love," the whites mean truth, but then there are yellows that mean "slighted love."

I guess I’ve got to bring in another armload of Zucchini — after all Chrysanthemums in general mean "you’re a wonderful friend."

I know why she planted Gardenias, which mean "secret love" because on our wedding day I left the white Carnation boutonnieres, which mean "pure love," in the refrigerator at my apartment and in the emergency sent a young boy to the nearest florist shop to buy replacement boutonnieres. He came back with white Gardenias, which mean "secret love," but those boutonnieres that my best man and I wore perfumed the whole church that Thanksgiving Day 55 years ago.

But my wife also planted plenty of Carnations. Pink to mean "I’ll never forget you," red to mean "my heart aches for you." The striped ones mean  "wish I could be with you," and white, that means among other things they bring a "woman good luck." But why on earth did she plant yellow carnations since that means "rejection."

Me? I plant tomatoes, which are "love apples," but also provide lycopene, which is an antioxidant ten times more effective than vitamin E. I plant yellow squash and three types of Zucchini for the summer. For the winter I harvest squash in the fall because they are keepers and can be stored for months in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place.

Zucchini, on the other hand, becomes a summer staple in a galaxy of recipes from bread in a variety of ways, to casseroles, souffles, pancakes, and custards.

Potatoes I grow in the compost bins have a taste unmatched by the store bought varieties. The peppers in my garden are both hot and mild, and the cucumbers are the salad varieties and the pickling kind. The eggplants make excellent ratatouille, corn is good eating on the cob or in corn chowder.

Not to mention apples, pears, plums and of course my only cash crop — wild blackberries.

Now that is a harvest of pure love.

If you thought I made up all those meanings of the flowers, you were wrong. I took them directly from a brochure that a florist printed, called "Before you send someone flowers, check out what they mean."

To me vegetables mean I love you with every bite.

(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470 or via e-mail at elderstatesmansblog@yahoo.com)

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.