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Only one ground rule: You and only you can do the gardening—not your brilliant Mexican illegal.
Time to start a war.
A flower war.
After more than a decade of living in Grandview Heights, aka Smalltown, USA, I am throwing down this challenge to the rest of the city of Columbus and its burbs: We, the Bobcats of Grandview, have the best home gardens in the entire county of Franklin. Heck, we have the best in the whole Columbus metropolitan area.
Grandview, the town of a thousand green thumbs. I can see the municipal motto signs now.
Every time I go for a walk (braving the packs of frisky dogs and their enabling owners), every time I ride my bicycle (dodging the Grandview cops because I haven’t got a light on it yet), every time I drive through nearly any part of the suburb, I have been struck by how much pride there is among homeowners.
Flower pride. And, I have found, flowers make me happy. Other people’s, anyway. You’ve heard of aromatherapy? Well, just seeing flowers is good for you, too.
From Goodale to West Third, it’s one front yard after another boasting riots of rhododendrons, orgies of orchids, sunny sunflowers, lilies languorously lounging, gladioli glowing, tulips and Persian violets side by side in floral harmony. There isn’t a street where there isn’t something strikingly well done in terms of home gardening. It’s really quite inspiring and if Van Gogh or Matisse or Monet were alive, I’m sure they’d be setting up an easel as we speak.
In fact, world traveler that I am, Grandview is second only to France when it comes to public addiction of flowers.
Martha Stewart would be proud.
So what does all this mean to everybody else in the rest of the county? Speaking unofficially and in no way for the rest of Grandview, I say to all non-Grandview folk who own a home and grow a flower: top us.
Only one ground rule: You and only you can do the gardening—not your brilliant Mexican illegal. We’ll call this the Bexley rule.
I think what made me hip to Grandview being flower-crazy was, of all things, a slightly inebriated bicycle ride I made late one night shortly before Christmas. I went up one street and down another, amazed at the holiday-light enthusiasm I saw house after house, block after block.
That journey planted the seed of awareness about my community’s civic pride. So, on a recent sober cycling trip, I noticed flowers, flowers, flowers. So pretty. So innocent. So Grandview.
Except for one rather decrepit yard, which looked as if it had been turned over to the vicissitudes of nature, boasting but a sad case of not-so-hardy mums at the base of the steps.
It was my place.
