Friday Flashback: Columbines

One thing about writing this blog has been that it has got me thinking about connections current events have with the past. The page you see are the posts in their final form, but behind the scenes in the Blogspot Green Room (or maybe just rehearsing in the garage?), are embryonic posts that need some work. Some have a few jotted down paragraphs, whilst some are just a photo or a word waiting for me to flesh things out for you, dear reader.

I realised that a lot of my posts-in-waiting are related to past events (hence my lack of urgency in getting them published). I've seen a few other blogs with a "Friday Flashback" strategy where each Friday there is a post devoted to a past event. I thought this would be a fun way to get some of my reminiscing posts finished and out there. So for my Friday Flashbacks, the rules guidelines are that each Friday I will write a post that connects current events (children or garden) with something that happened in my pre-child life. So here goes! This one has been waiting with just one photo and the title...

Columbines

This post was nearly just a question: aren't columbines annuals? Because my year-old columbines had celebrated spring by bolting a few weeks ago. A quick Google resolved that they are in fact perennials (yes, I am an amateur gardener!) The first flowers of this year are sadly an insipidly pale yellow...

...which is a shame, as the whole reason I planted these columbines in the first place was for B and I to reminisce about our time in Colorado, the blue columbine being Colorado's state flower. We spent as much as we could of the Colorado summer in the mountains, places like this:

Fourth of July Trail, on the Fourth of July weekend, 2005

The mountains behind are the Continental Divide- water falling on this side runs to the Atlantic, on the other side to the Pacific (anyone seen the excellent Stephen Fry in America recently?) And in the foreground, the pale blue flowers are blue Columbines. I think these mountain meadows were my favourite part of the hikes- watching The Sound of Music has nothing on walking through wildflowers with mountains around you.

This is the columbine I was thinking of when I bought a punnet of mixed columbines for our garden- the blue and white petals and yellow centre. I'm still trying to see whether I can buy proper "Colorado" columbines here.

I wish we had taken more photos (and had used a better camera than our tiny 2.5MP job that carked it a few months later)- especially of the waist-deep Columbines we walked through in August in the mountains behind Telluride. For us out-of-towners it was surreal, even more so when we saw hummingbirds feeding from the flowers.

But like many things, B and I tell ourselves that it's just another experience we can relive with the boys...