Survivalists
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
One of the first stories that I ever wrote for this column was about my Grandmother Schubert's four-o'clocks. The smell of her flowers is one of my enduring childhood memories. All I have to do is sniff a whiff of four-o'clock-sweetness and I think of Grandma.
In honor of her, I planted four-o'clocks at every place I ever lived. In California, I planted them in the garden instead of next to the house and thus began my lesson about the survivability of four-o'clocks.
Before long, in California's mild and flower-favorable climate, the four-o'clocks threatened to take over the whole garden. Not only did those seeds grow tuberous roots that increased in size year after year, but they seeded the garden soil liberally. Instead of weeding my California garden, I chopped four-o'clocks. Even in the years that followed — when I was in Kansas and no one really tended the garden — the four-o'clocks flourished and any time my daughter wandered past the garden, those little survivalists called to her and reminded her of her mother.
When we moved to Kansas, I planted four-o'clocks. For some reason they had trouble getting started, so I'd buy another little packet of seeds and try again. When I started teaching art at Butler of Marion, I discovered a huge patch of four-o'clocks right by the side door. Their fragrance was overwhelmingly lovely and I coveted this verdant patch of beauty. You can only imagine how many seeds this flower bed produced and every week from fall to frost I would fill my pockets with four-o'clock seed and dream of spring. At first, I was color selective — our houses in Ramona are color-coded, you know. Cousin's Corner specializes in RED flowers. The Ramona House features every shade of PINK and at Jake's Place I wanted YELLOW four-o'clocks to enhance the red pots filled with geraniums.
By last fall, my gathering of seeds was indiscriminate. My four-o'clocks could be any of the lovely shades from white to orange to fuchsia — it was fine with me, so long as they grew; because I discovered that this fine little flower was one of those colorful energizer bunny-flowers that just kept on blooming! Unlike the seasonal blooms that last awhile and then succumb to the heat, some blight or the grasshoppers, the four-o'clocks seemed impervious to all threats.
This spring, I came to the college and discovered that someone had been digging in their four-o'clock bed. It was early in the season. The four-o'clocks had just begun to peep through the soil and now they were gone. In their place were several lovely little unnamed decorative shrubs and a couple of six-packs of petunias. "Do we have a new gardener?" I asked at the main desk. "No, it's just us," said Pauline. "And you are trying to get rid of those lovely four-o'clocks?" I asked. 'We just thought we'd try something different," she answered. "Good luck," I said with a grin, "You're up against a mighty formidable foe."
The next few weeks I watched the battle between the new gardeners and 5,692 four-o'clock seeds. When school was out for the summer, the Visiting Team of lovely new petunias was lagging behind. When I went back to class a couple of weeks ago, I stopped in front of the old four-o'clocks bed and howled with delight. I had never seen such a verdant bed of flowers — at least four feet tall and growing — and already seeds were flying everywhere. The four-o'clocks won!
Last summer, Tooltime Tim showed me a corner between his garage and his shop and said, "I'd like to have some flowers planted in there so I don't have to mow." Notice, he wasn't after esthetics but just country practicality. I've been puzzling over his dilemma for a solid year. "What kind of flower would tolerate neglect, smother the weeds, be impervious to grasshoppers and grow in spite of drought?
You got it! Four-o'clocks.
It's another day in the country and filling my pockets with seed won't do. Next week I'm taking a bucket to Butler to gather seeds!
