Mom’s Jitterbugs

 

Featured image: Mom's Jitterbug

Mom’s Jitterbugs are blooming this year, and they were glistening and sparkling with diamonds from the morning dew. The Jitterbugs don’t seem to bloom every year. I don’t know why. They are yellow-brown irises. I really don’t know why they have the name Jitterbug, but it certainly is a fun name.

I understand that when I first looked them up, I learned there is an orchid that looks quite a bit like Mom’s iris called the Mendenhall. Now that I have seen it, perhaps it would be fun to try and raise this orchid just to have this memory of my mom around all year. I used to raise orchids, but they kind of got out of hand. I had about 20 of them growing, and just watering them was a full-time job. But then I digress from the original story of the Jitterbug.

Anyway, as I was having coffee this morning and looking over the gardens and wondering which flower would be the first to bloom and show color this spring, there was Mom’s Jitterbug. I was so delighted to see her. She popped up right next to some marigolds I had just planted, and her brown-and-yellow color looked so nice next to the marigolds.

I first saw Mom’s Jitterbug next to the side of our little red house. The first house I remember. The first house where we buried my rabbit and our first dog in the backyard. The house where there was a huge strawberry patch in the back corner of the lot. And the first house that had a fence around it, so I knew where I could play and stay within my boundaries and not get lost.

The Jitterbugs were just outside the fence. There was a gate that I was never to open, and the Jitterbugs were just outside that gate. If I opened the gate and dared to play in the mud—which I occasionally did—and dared to play between the gate and the Jitterbugs, I knew I was in trouble. But the mud was always so delightfully tempting, and sometimes I just couldn’t resist.

Anyway, when my father passed and I closed up the house for the last time and was driving away for the last time, I couldn’t help but stop and pick some of those Jitterbugs for my own garden.

And when we moved to the house we currently live in, the Jitterbugs came with me, so it was a delight to see them this morning in the sun.

I think painting this memory would be hard to do, but worth the try. Painting a memory would be very experimental for me. For while it is real, a memory really isn’t.