To recap, Daisys are sweet, strong, simply, cheerful, friendly, resilient, great under pressure, predictable and low maintenance. They require balanced care aside from sunlight, of which they require as much as possible and at the very least 6 hours of full exposure. If you want your daisys to grow with you, they have to be cut back each season to encourage growth, if not, they'll reach maturity and stop growing.
The white petals and yellow center are iconic and remind me of everything i knew a flower to be since i was a little girl. its what i see when i think of a flower. To me, it is simple and perfect, others might be underwhelmed by its classic nature, but i see home when i see its strong stem, its shield of white petals that shoot outward from its bright showy center, protecting its roots while welcome us to see its bloom and enjoy its childlike qualities, stirring up the child within us that would pluck each petal, alternating "love me's" and "love me nots" to determine a crushes favor, or the child within us that would carefully dress our braids with its blooms in an attempt to extenuating our own beauty and draw parallel to the flowers effortless glow.
Hollyhocks, like Daisys are faithful flowers, designed perennially to return again each year, finding roots and establishing a home to come home to. They grow tall, come in many beautiful colors and are ideal for dressing garden walls and making a house feel like a home. They symbolize rebirth and fruitfulness as they are self seeders. after they looks for the first time they can live for years because they drop there own seeds once their flowers fade and regrow each season. They do require however their loving friends, the butterflies and the hummingbirds that they attract each spring to help them pollinate and grow. They require moist, rich well-drained soil and full sunlight to grow. but when nurtured, its beauty and strong tall stems provide large beautiful blossoms that feed life all around them, provide shade and are truly useful flowers.
The Hollyhock can even be used to make a medicinal tea used to preventing and treating breathing disorders and digestive tract problems. Some people apply it directly to the skin for treating ulcers and painful swelling or inflammation. It healing, nurtures and supplies to the natural life that surrounds it but it also requires great care. My grandmothers garden is lines with hollyhocks and i can still remember the color of each cultivar in order as I walked down the garden line each year. They grew tall each summer and gracefully covered the brown, outdated brick wall in an otherwise whimsically quaint garden. Those beautiful hollyhocks where the reason for my memories of humming birds and butterflys that seemed to have taken perminate residency in my grandparents back yard. Their colors and wild confidence allowed me to imagine I was the little girl in the secret garden as I made believe my summers away in the otherwise gray and brown painted Holbrook. My grandparents took loving care of those Hollyhocks and in return, those Hollyhocks became a loved and essential part of their beautiful oasis.
Hollyhocks are useful, nurturing, they thrive on their interaction with nature around them, and while they need great care, they provide so much and produce the most beautiful fragrant unique blossoms that make you feel like you're in Fern Gully, or at least somewhere more magical where 3 inch cup like flowers of copper, red, pink, white, black, peach and yellow dance up their 6-8 feet tall cultivar and provide a traditional look to any garden and tower over the other blossoms i loving care. Interestingly, thier heart shaped leaves and fruit colored flowers are protective to its lively hood, carrying toxins that would make humans or pets sick if consumed. But that same toxic nature always gives it the ability to thrive in hostile environments, they are one of the only pants that can survive when planted near a black walnut tree as its toxins protect it from the deadly toxins of the tree. Its strength, beauty, nurturing and medicinal qualities makes it the mother of the garden.
When a daisy loves a Hollyhock, its not so simple. They have different strengths and weaknesses, they have different purposes and fulfill the measure of thier creations independently. But love is unifying so they find their common goals and choose to fulfil them together, using one anothers qualities. How lucky they are to love each other, the Daisy teaches the hollyhock cheerfulness, simplicity and confidence and the Hollyhock teaches giving, progression and teamwork. They have such different strengths, it would make sense to see them together often, but they also thrive under very different conditions. Their soil types, rooting systems and light requirements are different and while its possible for them to co-exist, it takes great care and attention. The hollyhock could unknowingly grow tall enough to shade the daisy and take away from its sunshine and growth. In turn, the daisy is resistant to most bugs and its resistance could deter the wildlife that the hollyhock relys on and thrives in. Daisys when not maintained properly can become weeds and Hollyhocks when not properly secured can easily topple over, crushing the floral life once protected by its shade and stature.
But an experience gardener knows that flowers belong together no isolated to grow alone and sectioned orderly. The most beautiful gardens are a little messy and display the love of their planters. A loving relationship that require knowledge, effort, intention and constant nourishment. Sure a sprinkler system would be nice, or irrigation once or twice a month.water, sun and soil, simple as that. If anything is going to truly thrive and become its best edition, it needs so much more.
Chad and I recently had a pretty hard conversation about love and what it means to us both. There was disappointment, stress and frustration boiling over our words and tears being held back as if to reserve a vulnerability when addressing the neglect of each others openness and attempts at love. We were doing the basics, water, soil, sunshine. Date nights, scriptures, and loving acts of service, kind words, and even special surprises to try and ignite a flame of contentment and satisfaction between us. But when we truely checked ourselves, we were mal-nurished and feeling suffocated by eachothers attempts to fill the wrong needs and solve the wrong problems.
The conversation was enlightening and humbling as it brought us both to the same conclusion (by very different means i might add). We had been loving each other all wrong. A Hollyhock does not feel nurtured and loved in the same the same way a daisy does, and a hollyhock treating a dasiy in the manner she wishes to be treated or even in a way she figures by her own means is selfish, ineffective and a true waste of energy. For a Dasiy and a Hollyhock to love one another, they have to learn each others way of life by selflessly stepping outside of themselves. and in a leap of faith, they must forgetting thier own needs in the service of each other.
Chad and I have changed so much this last year, work has changed chads whole world, his calling has changed his heart and both of them have changed his needs and desires greatly. These family changes had left me without a map in a new maze. I was grasping at straws trying to make him happy and i seemed to only be pushing his buttons and feeling exhausted. He in turn has been so preoccupied, i was feeling unimportant and more of a requirement than a pleasure to be around on our dates. it was obvious that there was some sort of effort on both of our parts but it was as though we had forgotten how to care for each other.
We talked it out....for a long time. We came up with some wonderful ideas to better care for each other and express our love in meaningful and purposeful ways but most importantly we stopped seeing each other in such basic terms. He's not just a flower, he's a dasiy. (Chad would cringe at the comparison) and he doesn't just need sunshine, he needs 5-6 hours daily and partial shading for 3-4 hours in the afternoon, he doesn't just need water, but he need water through well-draining soil and only while they are actively growing. He needs 1 inch of water per week when it does not rain. I'm not just planting daisies here. I'm building and eternal bond of love and happiness...I need to KNOW him better, LOVE him like Christ loves and spend my life in his SERVICE. Of course the same goes for the Hollyhock. Its needs are often more....high maintenance (straight from the horses mouth) but hollyhocks are patient and enduring, they don't just require support, they require full storm reinforcements and grow best when close to a wall that can catch her when she's too weak to stand! We decided that communicating our desires, as vain or as needy or as unusual as they may seem, would be the best way for us to learn how to take care of each other.
I read a great talk recently from Ed and Ann Lauritzen, its from the 80's but its truer today even than it was then, And except i loved read, "How can husbands and wives better their marriage? It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that obedience to the basic commandments alone will automatically ensure a happy marriage. In marriage one needs to apply additional principles and instructions from the Lord, and every husband and wife need to focus specifically on improving their relationship—and be willing to spend the time and effort necessary."
I'm happy to report we have both become much more observant and caring gardeners. And the love we receive and give is so much more powerful since we know the effort and discipline it has required. We still struggle but honestly a lot less, there's more trust because we've worked harder to know each other. It's hard not to draw parallels between our relationship with each other and our individual relationships with Christ, in whom when we trust, we feel his love more potently. Something I love(probably the most) about our relationship is our differences. Life is always interesting that way and my mind is always expanding with his differing and sometimes opposing opinions making their impressions on me. Our garden is so much more colorful with each other and I think all things bright and beautiful take hard work. I'm so grateful for a husband worth serving, loving, laboring, changing and humbling myself for.
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