My grandmother had a green thumb. I have bright memories of her, or maybe I remember someone else’s memories of her, in the yard with her long sleeves and sun hat, weeding her flower gardens, pruning her roses, or moving plants from one spot to another. She was an award winning rose gardener. According to old, torn and yellowed newspaper clippings, roses were her specialty.

I don’t know if she was ever recognized for her daffodils and irises but they’re beautiful and bountiful. Decades after her work of transplanting, dividing bulbs, storing rhizomes, and tending to them they still burst through the top of the earth.

Patches of irises and daffodils (we call them buttercups) are all over our and the neighbor’s yard which was my grandmother’s place a long time ago.

The cheerful yellow flowers are the first to show their colors as soon as the sun warms the cold winter ground enough. The irises come up later and stand tall. Buttercups are my favorite.

Grandmother’s green thumb is still coloring the landscape.