Mom has been visiting me for the past couple of weeks. Today, I suggested — of my own free will! — that I drive us up to the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. She asked multiple times if I were sure that were really what I wanted to do with my spare time. She remembers dragging her pain-in-the-butt kids around to botanic gardens, too. But nowadays, far removed from the 20 acres I grew up on, open space is something I crave desperately. Finding solitude in the middle of Boystown is difficult even in my own apartment.
But there was a business side that I’d never appreciated before, too. Mom pointed out plants that she wanted photos of, and I obliged. She showed me plants she and Dad had previously sold, told me about the difference between true geraniums and scented geraniums, ranted about how it made no sense to refer to the Lamiaceae family as the “mint family” because rosemary and many other things are in it. (I even properly identified a Nutmeg Geranium. I was proud.) I am truly in awe of the knowledge she has that even these massive, well-staffed organizations don’t possess. She has assembled bits of truly ancient history with more recent narratives to form a more complete picture (like exactly why a certain variety has been bred, or why we use one herb for something today when historically it wasn’t used for that). Hell, she recently spent an entire day researching the Moroccan mint tea custom and its roots.
And you know what? This stuff is fascinating. Take that, 12-year-old me.
EPILOGUE
Mom and I drove home in heavy traffic which, we later discovered, was caused by a Bruce Springsteen concert at Wrigley Field. And we had to walk home more than a mile through throngs of drunken humanity, carrying the newspaper-wrapped parcels of dried flowers we’d bought at the garden. You want to trip out a bunch of concert-goers? Carry around something that looks like roses wrapped in newsprint. One crossing guard even chuckled and said to Mom, “Bringing roses to Bruce?”
We decided that the best concerts are the ones that you don’t actually go to and can therefore lie about:
“I still can’t believe Bruce threw his underwear at you.”
“Bruce and I go way back, honey. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.”
Josh Renaud
If ever you have a reason to visit St. Louis, don’t miss the Missouri Botanical Garden. It’s one of my favorite things about living here.