I love yellow. It's always been my favorite color. Even when my Auntie Grace made me a little yellow polyester suit when I was five that I was forced to wear against my iron will, its one redeeming quality was its color. Yellow was all that kept that flammable fabric and one of Nanny's stolen well-lit cigs from becoming intimately acquainted.
It makes sense, then, that I am unabashedly addicted to the sun. If it's out, so am I. Unfortunately, my skin is likely up for harvest for some charming purses and belts in another ten years or so. I can't help myself.
Several years ago I discovered yellow climbing Black-eyed Susans. It was by chance that I stumbled onto them; and a miracle that they flourished under my watch (my thumb is NOT green). For nearly a decade I have planted these suckers each spring and they have spread, climbed and, in my humble opinion, made beautiful their corner of the universe. What I love most is how they will climb through, around, on top of anything. And they wind around whatever they can find. They just need a sparse amount of attention and the return is exponential.
And then the first frost comes and my heart breaks.
I'm not wading into a big ol' metaphorical pond here, but there is something to be said for a living thing that keeps reaching. Something to be said for something beautiful that wraps itself around and over weeds and rocks and keeps blooming. Something to be said for yellow.
Last year I let my Black-eyed Susans die long before the frost. It was a difficult summer. I couldn't see the beauty of life--least of all in the flowers in which I had taken such pride in summers past. And I didn't care.
My flowers have thrived this summer, but I know the temperature will soon claim them yet again. Not a day goes by that I don't take a good look and savor that which I once neglected. There are clumps of them all around the drive, the mailbox, the yard. I love them.
Wherever I go, whatever I do, these patches of yellow will be planted by me where I am every spring. They do my heart good. And hey: When all is said and done, we all deserve the chance to bloom, don't we?
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