Neatness has its problems

Have you noticed the scarcity of my favorite wild flower, the Spanish Blossom, this year? Every year I look forward to seeing fields of the little yellow blossoms before the winter wheat preparations plow up the growths from the summer. If there were no actual fields with the blooms, there were plenty in the road ditches and right-of ways. I considered the treat of all that cheerful yellow as my "fix" for the winter which will be without much color.

Yellow is especially bright and cheerful and the flowers bobbing in the autumn breezes was like an omen to me. They seemed to be saying "Look at us in our glory. We will see you again next year. And until then you can watch for other yellow blooms in the spring."

And sure enough, as the poet says, "Nature's first green is gold." And I notice the yellows in the very early leaves, especially the willows. And the flowers such as daffodil, jonquils, forsythia, and some crocus remind me of the departed Spanish Blossom of past months.

My father believed in leaving one of his crop fields to farrow for a year and then he plowed under the year's growth to sustain the soil. When that field happened to be the one nearest our home, we gloried in riding Princess Peggy through the knee high Spanish Blossoms. Princess Peggy is long gone and this year so are the Spanish Blossoms.

There is no blight. The weather has been favorable for the growth. But this year the late planted soybeans are filling the fields that might have been awaiting wheat plantings. No farmer today can afford to leave a field idle, but often plants a new crop the day after combining the former one. Also the good farmers mow around their crops to keep any stray seeds from something other than the crop from infecting his yield.

Many farmers and rural home owners mow the road's right-of-way a couple of times each year now. It looks great. It is neat and the mowed grass that would have later shown to be weeds makes the crops look lush and beautiful.

My mother would have been delighted. She often would say as we drove to town, "This would be so pretty if the people would use their lawn mowers and paint brushes more often." Of course that was when the lawn mowers were the push and sweat reel type mowers that certainly would have been very hard to use in the road ditches or on rough ground. A trip to town these days shows well-manicured lawns and roads and one delightful spot where they have left the Spanish Blossoms to bloom unhampered. The homes are well cared for and most of them are covered with something that doesn't require paint.

I don't remember her particularly sharing my sister's and my fondness for the little yellow flowers but she did like most flowers, especially petunias. But she didn't ride the horse through the fields as Ellen and I did, so I don't think she felt the intoxication that we did racing through all that beauty.

So now we enjoy seeing the well-kept fields, the neat lawns and road ditches, and the planted flowers around people's houses, but don't see many blooms that Mother Nature planted for us. Queen Ann's Lace is another flower we don't often see today. But all the neatness makes the times we do spy some of the natural blooms even more appreciated than before. So maybe it all evens out in the end.

But if you hadn't noticed the absence of the Spanish Blossoms maybe you have been relieved that I wasn't writing another column about my favorites as I often did this time of year. Well, I couldn't let a year go by without my annual cheering section for a lowly little yellow blossom that I love. And we do have two little plants at the edge of the mowed area by our driveway that I smile at each time I pass.