Every mother’s day, growing up, my sister and I would walk one block down the street to “Azalea Park;” a small parcel of public land lined with a rainbow of azalea plants. They peaked just at Mother's Day. We would pick the flowers and string them together to create a lei for our mother.
This year, I’m in DC just a few days before Mother’s Day, and it seemed like the perfect time to resurrect the old tradition. It must have been 25 years or more since I last made her a flower garland. But as we pulled into the old neighborhood, I noticed that “Azalea Park” was mostly green with a few flecks of pinks and reds and just as many brown spots of blooms past their prime.
It seemed odd to me that I would have been able to create such lush leis growing up, and today there are slim pickings. Is this a case of global warming, that the plants are blooming weeks earlier than they did 25 years ago? Or is this just an anomaly of a very cold winter followed by the warm spring temperatures?
In any case, I was able to create a small gift for my mother… and thank her for the wonderful love and memories of my childhood. Happy Mother’s Day!
Beautiful! We’ve noticed this year everything is about two weeks ahead of past years. I think it’s a result of our unusual winter.