“Where flowers bloom, so does love.” - Lady Bird Johnson
This Mother’s Day is bittersweet.
The sweet: we started a business that grew from our hearts.
The bitter: our mom isn’t here to witness it.
We lost our mom, Naomi, a little more than two years ago to cancer. Before the illness invaded her body like the alien she dubbed it, she was a good skier, a decent mountain biker, a not-so-good golfer, and an exceptional gardener.
It’s the gardening we think of most these days.
Over the years, Mom planted more than 100 rose bushes, irises, dahlias, lilacs, tulips, daisies, hyacinth, lilies and grasses. She cultivated vegetables. Babied berries. Raised bed gardens—and a little hell.
After nurturing their acre of property in Loveland, she turned to my little plot of earth in Portland, helping me select plants, dig holes, weed and care for my unruly garden. She once helped me re-landscape my entire front yard, planting grasses, shrubs, trees, bamboo, and moving two cubic yards of gravel and large rocks. In a single weekend.
She was that kind of mom.
She was that kind of person.
We know that she would have so proud (and a little amazed) that Jason and I launched a business together—and that we did it without a single sibling squabble. (Yet. Give us time.).
As we reflect on our newly planted business and this week’s Flower Moon, the last supermoon of 2020, our hearts are with our mom, all the ways she made us who we are and who we’ll be, and how everything she nurtured continues to thrive—from her garden to us.
This year Jason and I will be making a donation to the Loveland Garden Club to plant roses in her memory. We hope you plant something that makes your heart bloom this month, too.
Peace, love and flowers,
morgan