Charlotte Humphry’s
columbine
People say she always carried a shovel and a notebook in the back wherever she went. The shovel was to dig up flowers that she liked. Different ones at different times of the year. Like in the spring she’d dig up what she called pinks. They was the reddest red, but she called them pinks. The note book was to write down where they was growing, a cut with the soil raw from the road grader or from the picks and shovels of the county. Pretty shaded, not too dry. So she could plant them in the same sort of place. She loved that book.
Daisies, what she called tiger lilies, chicory, milkweed, mullen, filled different spots in her front yard. Periwinkle, she got from Blanche
People made fun of her because they said she was collecting weeds that their husbands was trying to keep out of the fields. Pigweed, ironweed. Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod.
Columbine with a flower that must be what a meteor looks like up close. Just about blue blending into orange with those flaming vermillion tails. You see them growing along the roads.
That was until the summer her neighbor Mrs. Diggers got her some seeds from the catalog and grew columbine the palest yellow all over. After that, Charlotte Humphry just grew store bought seeds. Or from a peddler.