I never recall a time when plants didn’t play a role in our home life. As a tot, little sprigs of greenery in small pots of soil or water-filled jelly jars meandered around the cold cereal boxes on the breakfast table.

A fuzzy leaf, a flower stem, a strand of ivy, seeds from apples and oranges — each nurtured towards developing a root ball of an African violet, geranium, ivy vine, or trees. These were the houseplants of my mother, a young, thrifty homemaker.

The next botanical development — my parents bought a home. They planted a lawn with corner accents of rhododendrons, azaleas, and a blue hydrangea, the blue color the result of growing in acidic soil. For trees, a pink dogwood graced the front yard. A red oak and a European mountain ash iin time brought shade to the south-facing backyard.

Dad constructed a cold frame with glass, window-like coverings. Mom was in her glory. She packed the soil there with seeds: pansies, marigolds, salvia, snapdragons, hollyhocks, etc. In time, annuals and perennials filled the flowerbeds.

We lived a couple blocks away from my elementary school. I ran home for lunch every day, then ran back in time to enjoy a brief recess.

On a sunny day, a welcomed break from rain, I joined Mom in the backyard. She handed me the seed packets as she tucked seeds into the soil. The sun warmed my back. I stayed longer at the house. The pull of plants outweighed recess tetherball.

We said little. Mom cut open the seed packets. I held them as she tapped seeds into the palm of her hand. The day felt like magic. Warming sun. Peaceful. Anticipation of summer blooms.

I longed to stay home. Surely something this special warranted a missed afternoon from school.

Nope. No skipping school. The quintessential gardening moment lingers in my mind.

The next era in Mom’s gardening — roses. From the back of the house to the front yard along the fenceline, Dad dug a flowerbed where Mom grew full-blossomed, fragrant roses. Dad scrounged around for bud vases, and we enjoyed rosebuds on the fireplace mantel and bouquets on the kitchen table among cold cereal boxes or a baked chicken dinner.

As a teen, I picked the most fragrant roses for a vase on my desk. One drawback to all that rose glory — weeding the thorny bushes!

In time, grandchildren added to the rose garden — gifts of roses from the demise of any plant.

In later years, roses weren’t the only arrow in Mom’s quiver of botanical glories.

Dad purchased a second-hand greenhouse, installed it in the backyard. Another era — this time a wider variety of seeds and plants, from heat-loving succulents to tender, moisture-loving ferns, along with a few bonsai starts.

The biggest plant group, though — orchids. Typical of Mom, she’d started frugally with “test tube babies,” small bits of green that took a few years to mature to orchid blooming-sized plants.

And what a glory they were: colors of island sunsets, deep purples like rich velvet, roaring reds, pure whites with a whisper of yellow necks. Small blooms the size of a thimble, enormous blooms bigger than a baseball, others like clusters of butterflies.

Through the years, other orchid enthusiasts visited her modest greenhouse in the backyard.

In time, the work of repotting the orchids and tending to the various care needs of the plants as the couple aged became a challenge.

Ultimately, Mom and Dad donated the orchid collection to a nearby community college greenhouse.