Daisies spring up in profusion in early summer. The grassy pastures of Wild Rose Meadows are full of the cheerful white and yellow flowers. Cows eat only grass and don't touch the daisies.

Daisies self seed, so even more daisies will bloom next year. One of the benefits of having so many wild flowers is the amount of food they provide for our bee hives.

Traditional old fashioned bright orange poppies call out "farm, " don't you think? Allis Chalmers tractors were painted bright orange to match oriental poppies. The Allis Chalmers Corporation called it "Persian Orange." Dave's Grandma and Grandpa had a poppy patch just a few feet from the back porch. When the poppies bloomed we knew it was time to start harvesting the hay crop.

When we moved to the farm in the month of September a number of years ago, we didn't know the treasures waiting to be discovered the next spring. You can imagine how excited we were when the snow melted and a parade of flowers started popping up around us. The first flowers that spaing up in the yard were the bloodroots brought up from the woods, and helliborus that stays green all winter. Then the trilliums surprised us, followed by bright bulb plants - white and pink hyaciths, yellow daffodils, blue squill and red tulips.

By late April the flowering trees and shrubs burst into bloom - cherries, dogwood and quince, followed by snowballs, bridal veil and viburnum. The flower gardens turned bright lavender and pink with money plants and phlox, interspersed with purple spheres of alium. Peonies announced the transition into summer, and the processsion of flowers continued well into the fall.

One of the benefits to living on a farm is room - plenty of room to plant all the flowers a person's heart desires. We are thankful that the people who lived here for 30 years before us like flowers as much as we like them.