I don't remember much about flowers in dry Nebraska -- just sand hills where even cactus failed to bloom. I need rain to have a colorful spring. After moving to Arkansas, Mom always planted hollyhocks. Each year these tall stalks produced a variety of colors. I never cared much for them, so I've never grown them, but Mom thought she got a lot of flower for less care. I don't know if she had to replant them, but there they were each year, beside the smokehouse, blooming their heads off.I prefer perennials. Starting with Easter lilies or jonquils or whatever they're called. Not having a green thumb or healthy soil, my first attempts at planting jonquils in a row up and down my driveway failed. There were stems, but no yellow flowers blooming so prettily. I dug up the bulbs and planted them along the back fence, and I get a few spindly flowers around Easter time.I also planted tulip bulbs under a small windmill in the front yard. The first year they bloomed wildly in reds and yellows and oranges. But that's the last time I've seen much color. When all that the plants produced were sickly pale yellow tops, I tried to dig them up. Those bulbs dug in and try as I might, I can't get rid of them. Now each year one or two pale yellow tulips will bloom even though I do everything to kill them, but they refuse to die.Another bulb I've planted was a hardy, purple and white iris. Originally, my husband's uncle gave them to us, having dug them from his father-in-law's old place near Pea Ridge, so they must be over 100 years old. That flower is my one success story. They bloom everywhere, you don't even have to plant them underground. One year I decided to replant the bed. I had so many bulbs I finally threw some at the base of a tree, where they grew and bloom each year. I've given away bulbs and they are blooming all over the U.S.One year I planted zinnias on the front side of my garden. It's not a perennial, so each fall, after a frost, I'd pull off the tops of the flower and save them in a bag until the next gardening season when I'd replant them. They make beautiful cut flowers for inside. My flowers must know I love them because they bravely bloom, if only for a short time, even though they starve through bad soil, no fertilizer, bugs, drought.I have flowering bushes as well. The year we trimmed back our forsythia bush and it looked like a lady with her hair cropped, but it grew back. We started it with a slip. Our two lilac bushes also began with plants from Jerry's brother's bushes. When they are in full bloom they look and smell heavenly, and of course I have to have a vase of the cut blooms inside.Our two rose bushes have died - one a yellow rose given me from friends -- and we've replanted another one. I especially love creeping plants. One, from a friend's cuttings, has the most beautiful blue blooms. Other vines and ground cover came from neighbors. When visiting my old home place in Nebraska a few years ago I dug up a cactus and have replanted it in my cactus bed where it periodically blooms bright yellow. My daughter planted bulbs in her yard. After her husband leveled their yard with a tractor bulbs spread all over. I dug up a few and planted them in my flower beds where I'd planted chrysanthemums from loved ones' funerals.Mostly, my spring flowers consist of purple plants or dogwood and red buds, growing wild. I love the look of our lawn before the first cutting -- purple flowered weed, the miniature butter cups and other tiny blue and white flowers. I've heard of weed killer, but if it wasn't for green moss, wild flowers, dandelions and weeds, I'd have no yard at all.
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Editor's note: Marie Wiggin Putman lives in Little Flock. A native of Benton County, she writes a monthly column for the Westside Eagle Observer. She and her late husband, Jerry, were members of the Pea Ridge Historical Society.
Editorial on 04/09/2014