Mother and the Queen Anne's Lace

[graceadieu]

On a summer's day very much like today, except in Pittsburgh, many years ago, I was helping Mother in her garden. Among other things, Mother was a botanist, and her garden was always lovely and carefully tended. I was digging out weeds when Mother, looking over from where she was working, said "Careful, Georgia, don't disturb the Queen Anne's lace!" Mother had a particularly fine specimen of that pretty flower, which was, actually, an invasive weed. "Why do we have this here, Mother," I asked, "isn't it a weed?" Mother smiled, and said "It is a weed but a very pretty weed and we keep it here, within limits, because having Queen Anne's lace in close proximity to a vegetable garden is tremendously beneficial to the growth of tomatoes! So, we are helping Mr. Martin with his vegetables." (Mr. Martin was our near neighbor and close friend, whose entire back yard was an immense vegetable garden, except for the curving flagstone terrace, shaded by the largest weeping willow tree I have ever seen. How we loved to sit there on late summer afternoons, sipping ice tea and chatting.) "Why do we call a weed 'Queen Anne's lace' anyway?" I asked. Mother then told me that it was a flowering weed that was supposedly growing in a meadow where Queen Anne was making white lace that looked very much like the flowery weed. She pricked her finger and a bit of blood dripped onto the white lace, resembling the flowering weed, which has a tiny bit of red at the center of the white, lacey blossom. Whether or not the story is true, it is a pretty story, and there is a grain of truth to it. Queen Anne was an experienced expert with a needle and did, indeed, create lace in exquisite patterns she invented herself, often taking her inspiration for her patterns from nature. She often sat under canopies in flowering meadows to do her needlework, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting. It's a lovely story about a Queen and a lovely flowering weed, and I choose to believe every word. So, evidently, did Mother! that summer afternoon so long ago was August of 1957. I was nine years old.

Update/Upstart/Uptick/Upchuck: By midnight, I had finished the laundry, ironed all my Irish linen and damask dinner napkins, polished all the silver pieces, cleaned the shower in the master bath, cleaned and replaced the bulbs in the light fixture over the kitchen sinks and made my phone calls. I never did get my vacuuming done, nor my piano practice done, nor picked up my prescription, nor finished writing my Halloween cards, but those things will keep until tomorrow. Desdemona Pussycat was assisting me all day, so that slowed me down a bit! :)