It Turns Out Flowers DO Grow in Colorado . . . .

Hello again. I’m back after a 4-month hiatus. It was unplanned except that I had a third baby (his name is Blake) and got lost in the depths of his squishiness. See:

In August, the girls and I picked sunflowers along the roadside.

Blake rested peacefully in his car seat while we gathered handfuls of the goldenrod-colored flowers. The afternoon sunlight glowed off the faces of my children. Claire and Avery were disappointed to find that those beady, black ants liked the flowers as much as they do. They have quite the insect aversion right now. Still, they both had fistfuls of daisy-sized sunflowers by the time we moved on.

All summer throughout the Springs, I noticed sunflowers along the roads, and I remembered my April declaration that there were still no flowers here in Colorado. I wasn’t sure if I would see any at all, and I was most definitely not sure if I would create any roots that would compare even to the non-existent flowers.

Then, I noticed some large purple bushes pretty much everywhere. It turns out that the deer don’t eat the yellow or purple flowers, so they survive. The deer gobble up everything even things they technically aren’t supposed to like at all, like tulips. So, even though I think having deer right outside my windows is pretty awesome, when the green leaves FINALLY started growing in June, I am not ashamed to say that when I saw a deer eating them, I went and threw rocks ‘near’ the deer just to let it know – “These are MY leaves. Go back to the mountains for you OWN leaves.” Then I remembered that I live in the mountains and the deer were here first. SO. 

 Flowers are here in Colorado after all. And, even though I spent the weekend in Seattle realizing even more strongly how I miss it, maybe, just maybe I will blossom here in Colorado as well.

What do you do when you're homesick?