Photo by corina ardeleanu on Unsplash
Sometimes it recurs to me. I wonder when it was that I began to enjoy having flowers around to look at. To go up the section in a grocery store and take a bit of time to admire the bouquets, even when I don’t have an inkling to purchase any of them. I do not mind what condition they are in when I look at them—whether or not they start to wilt does not matter. Flowers are pretty.
As with most people, you tend to grow up and see plants around you. When you are a toddler or just a kid playing around the neighborhood, tiny flowers are common to see. There are these daisies, pansies, or dandelions that you just tend to pull out for fun while they are still in the early stages of growth. It is not like we give a thought when we are young about how we have just taken away a plant’s life. If someone had taught me that I could kill a flower by taking it directly from the ground, I probably would have felt like a I was a criminal for doing so. (My bad there.)
Then again, I guess it was not considered harmless. I mean, can you blame a kid for going around the lawn or near the mailbox to take something from the dirt and soil it lives on? I would say unless the neighbor or a family member sees you and tends to yell at you, you would probably get away with plucking small flowers. In any case, I do not remember anyone nearby losing their temper or blow up instantly at me for taking the tiny daisies and such.
Okay. Ripping grass is likely a no-no because Mother Nature doesn’t swiftly make plants regrow. Well, if she actually existed, she would be a deity. Perhaps she would be like the incarnation of Hestia/Vesta. In any case, I did not go on a grass ripping spree, but you know plucking a few pieces is fine. A question you might have is: Are grasses considered flowers?
This, however, does not need much of an answer. I honestly would think it would not need an answer, but some people do not tend to think of grass as a flowering family. I simply nod and agree at the notion that they are indeed some type of flower. Therefore, I kid you not when I state that grasses are flowers. At first glance, the grass you see doesn’t look so… appealing. It doesn’t really tap on the aesthetics that we see from other flowers.
Grasses are not roses, but they are also flowers or should I say, flowering plants. Shocking for some people to find out about this, or it is something that draws others in. Maybe a bit of both, but like any flower they belong to their own family. If you search for their family name on the internet, you usually see “Poaceae”. We do not expect a group of grass to just sprout petals you can pluck off. Those that do not typically have any flower heads and buds might be the type of grasses you can grow on lawns, though. The small leaf blades at home, from tiny cut ones around sidewalks. I suppose that is what we normally see as we grow up, but while there are other types of grasses that do grow flowers or have unique forms, I will not get into specific details. Save that for your own reading on botany and other sciences.
I would note that the aesthetic admiration or interest may start to develop in us when we get older. During my senior year at Naaman Forest HS, I took a class in Landscape Design for an elective. It seemed interesting to takes and despite having just one year left before graduating. I would have more high school credit hours than the required curriculum, but I still had to take a class that filled my eight-class schedule. But hey, at least it was a double-block schedule and (I had senior release), so I only had every other day to attend each class. I thought it would be a boring class where you only get to learn how to design blueprints for areas in a city/town. I ended up liking the class because my teacher was tolerant with us.
Anyhow, the first third of the semester I had with my class was where he took us out to familiarize us with the environment at school. Going outside to visit the campus grounds, plants and the greenhouse had the purpose of familiarizing us with perennials. From the leaves of southern magnolia trees, the backside will have some pubescence. The back of a magnolia’s leaf is a brown color, but it will eventually darken as time passes. You will see the flowers on the trees bloom into these cute white petals. Meanwhile, there were other trees around campus had exfoliated barks, so we noticed that the bark is paler. When we gathered around holly bushes, we saw sets of either three or five spikes on each leaf.
At the greenhouse, we saw wonderful assortments of flowers. The geraniums were red and in bloom, but some more were growing. As with other plants, they were well-cared for and the vivid sight of greenery was aesthetically pleasing. Further inside the greenhouse, there were a few flowers that resembled small, puffy mouths. We were told that these were snapdragons and upon closer examination, they were cute. I could imagine each of them jumping up and going down, making popping or snapping sounds. How delightful would this be if it happened? With the utmost care, this must have been a gateway to floral imagination.
Bruh. I would have liked for that one-third of the semester in the class to have continued. But we would not get to return outside. Ever again. It was a gorgeous sight while it lasted before we had to start on the real part the class: drawing landscape designs on paper. Boring but it was a practice I had had not experienced until then. I was kind of sad we could not get to see all those amazing sights, but the world does not end just because we had to shift our concentration to the class’s topic: Land Design. At least by graduation, my teacher was proud of having me as a student.
Then what was next on my list of things to do after graduating from high school? What about after entering a community college? Exploring a fresh new campus? At first, I did not have an easy schedule. That first semester as a college student was about getting to know where your classes were. At least for half of that semester, I rarely had breaks to go out and find a place to rest. It was not a good idea to take back-to-back classes and I dropped an honors college algebra class.
Until I requested to drop that class, I barely made friends in college. Finally…! I met more people and someone I befriended when I was working on my associates had told me there was a garden on campus. How cool. It would be a splendid hang out spot, but when I went to the garden, it was still time for the gnats and other small bugs to fly around. Better not go out when it was too hot, yet, the plants were pretty—even the ones that were withered.
College, however, seemed to keep a lot of us students preoccupied with earning our basics; next thing you know, we would make sure we had enough for both the associates and for many of us to transfer to four-year universities. The garden visits were limited or there would be others who stopped by there instead. Even so… Now something has popped into my head, I remembered something. Let us visit a prominent moment in 2016. I have this friend I would spend most of my days with when I was in community college. We hung out almost nearly every day since we met, either for class or to visit people. I think of her as the closest person who could be my best friend. And you know what really touched me, after all these years had passed, was?
One day, she gave me some flowers. To me, these flowers were special. They were homegrown and it was the first time someone had given me flowers. Neither the type of flowers nor the colors they were ever struck me as much as the moment I received them. I cannot recall how these flowers looked, but you know there is always something good in receiving flowers from someone, unless someone has an allergic reaction to them.
Annie Tran is an asexual and aspiring writer with a few works published by Route 7 Review, Impermanent Earth, Reunion: The Dallas Review, and WinglessDreamer. She graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas with a BA in Literary Studies and a minor in Creative Writing. She also dives into writing some queer works. In her spare time, she listens to J-pop and plays visual novels.