As far back as I can remember I’ve always been thrilled by color and form. Long ago people sealed letters with sealing wax. I remember melting sealing wax in different colors by holding a bottle over an alcohol lamp, dobbing the bottle with the warm wax, turning the bottle to make the colors blend. (My loving parents encouraged me in my creative ideas to make presents because money was scarce for buying them.) I remember picking a weed which grew in the ditches and dried there in winter called coffee beans. I sprayed them with shellac and then dusted them with glowing colored powders. Then other times when I had to set the table I was always creating fancy salads of canned pineapple or pears or both or other fruits using vegetable color to tint them, adding springs of parsley or cherries. I loved fooling with the colors and forms.
Then when I married, I remember attending a lecture on flower arranging. My eyes were opened to the beauty and possibilities of designing color and form. This was about 64 years ago, but I remember vividly the lovely young speaker in a pink smock showing how pretty red geraniums looked in Mexican blue glass and nasturtium with honeysuckle in an amber vase. Walking home because I was pregnant, I noticed a vacant lot full of Johnson Grass and how pretty and purple it was.
Our first home of our own had a Paul Scarlet climbing rose over the front door and hibiscus — all colors — grew in the yard. By then our first child, 5 years old, ran with me in the adjoining prairie picking arms full of Blackeyed Susans. I remember we bought 10 brown bean pots at Woolworths for the wild flowers and used them for the garden club luncheon.
Ten years later taking a course in flower-arranging, I found out how exciting and fulfilling it was to create design with form and color. My vegetable man came by in a truck and asked, “Do you want vegetables to eat or arrange?” He knew I would say the latter so he pulled out a beautiful large crook-neck squash, which delighted me.
The third child was a boy who needed more space to play and roam so we moved to the city. I realized that to have flowers for arranging one had to grow them and that the expense of seeds was so small, you could grow lots and lots of flowers. There on our large lot grew small trees so we had plenty of sun, until they grew larger.
Every season came with different kinds of flowers — winter came with covering the flowers to prevent freezing. I was happy growing children and flowers. Finally the time came for the children to leave the nest and build their own nests. That was as it should be. Not to worry. I still had my flowers.
Every year I planted tomatoes. This year I could hardly wait to plant them so I started February 8, which was taking a chance on freezing. Then on Good Friday, which is the sign of warm weather, I planted zinnias.Knowing the seeds liked warm weather, I put all the seed pots in a wheelbarrow and pushed them into the sun out of the perimeter of the Large Oak’s shade. As the sun moved around, I pushed the wheelbarrow again into the sun. In this action lay reason for the seedlings to come up quickly. In a few weeks they were ready to bloom. I was protecting myself from the sun with hat and gloves.
Years went by. The children had families of their own. I was still growing flowers despite a neighbor in back blocking out the sun with an eleven foot wall.
My husband and I were 85. I was well but he had heart trouble and suffered much. His sickness caused me to wait on him more. One day he said, “You’ve been so good to me, cooking me all those good meals and taking care of me. I want to give you a present.”
In answer, I said, “Build me a flower bed in the sun.” He had Curly do so. Several weeks later he said, “Curly, build Mrs. Illig another flower bed in the sun,” and he did.
Suddenly my husband was in the ambulance and I was riding in the front seat: Three days, and all the children and grandchildren gathering around him, but he couldn’t talk because he had tubes in his mouth to breathe; so they told him, “squeeze my hand in answer to my questions,” and he squeezed their hands in answer.
The older daughter and her son stayed with him almost to the end. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength to stay.
There’s some kind of rule that you should have a covering of flowers for the coffin. I called my good friends at the florist’s: “Mark, will you please come to my garden and pick all you need.” He said he would be glad to. The garden was such an important part of our 62 years together so it was fitting that the garden flowers should be put on his coffin. Mark came and gathered lovely things and he broke off branches from the loquat tree which was full of fruit.
A month later I had to have an operation on my face for skin cancer. The doctor assured me that he had gotten all the cancer out. When I went back to him to remove the stitches, I took a basket of flowers to him with a note saying, “Just a small token of appreciation for cleansing my face of cancer.”
The basket held pink geranium, red roses, lavender phlox, golden Euonymous, maidenhair fern, red and white petunias, and rose colored angel-wing begonia. It had lots of form and color. The doctor hugged me for the gift. It was an expensive gift. The price of the flowers showed by the scars on my face.