Picking Flowers in the Fall

Yesterday I was out of town with my daughter (which is why I'm just posting today). When we came home, we took our dog for a walk. It was another warm, beautiful fall day--I know I'm going to miss these days when the weather turns cold. As we neared the house, I told my daughter I wanted to show her something. After putting our dog in the house and grabbing some old kitchen shears, we trudged through crunchy leaves in the front yard. Extremely wide, our front yard curves out toward the street so that when you're in the driveway you can't see where the lawn ends. But you can see what's growing there.

Looking at the scissors in my hand, she asked, "Are we going to pick flowers?" I nodded as we walked toward the large camellia tree that we tend to forget about until it blooms in the fall and late winter. And boy is it putting on a show right now! It's absolutely covered with blooms and with buds that will soon be ready. Dark, waxy leaves highlight the delicate white flowers with tinges of pink on the petals. 

When the camellia blooms again in the winter, I will ask the same rhetorical question I always ask: how can a flower so fragile survive such cold weather? It looks like it belongs to April or May, yet I'm glad it doesn't wait until then. Seeing its beauty in the dead of winter heartens me. It reminds me that spring is coming--not right away but soon enough.

My daughter and I chose a few flowers and snipped them off. She was surprised to see the petals of the mature ones falling even as we gathered them, so we picked buds that look like they open in a day or two. I hope they do. With pumpkins, mums, and fall leaves ruling outdoors this time of year, it's nice to have fragile-looking, spring-like beauty inside.