Conway has long been designated as a “Tree City.” Now I read in my favorite newspaper, “The Horry Independent”, that Conway has also been named “Trail Town.” Halloween City, Trail Town, Tree City. Perhaps it could also be known as “Flower Town.”
It seems there’s always something blooming or being lovely or yards being decorated for various seasons. What could be more beautiful than Elm Street in March or April with the massive numbers of dogwood trees with their blooms nodding in a gentle spring breeze?
Hold on, I’m beginning to write like Wordsworth or another romantic poet!
We should rightly be proud of our beautiful town which employs a horticulturist who has a very green thumb, and a dream of plantings just where they should be for optimum beauty. There are others whose thumb is also noted for being green.
Najgy, my mother, tried desperately for her thumb to be that way. Yet, just as she would have a plant that she cared for, loved, watered as needed, or actually even talked to, Luther, my father, would arrive with the news that moving day is drawing near. Another job, another place-rural country mostly, with conditions sometimes not conducive to plant life. There generally was no space in her home for house plants, especially with rambunctious boys living there, streaking around corners, leaping over the philodendron or trying to eat the leaves of her geranium. One move took the Crady family to a by-way in the road called “Pop City”. The family at last was able to have some job and home stability. It was the longest stay and her happiest time. The love of her plant life was one named “Four O’clock”, a needy thing requiring just the right amount of everything in order to bloom, you guessed it, at four o’clock every day. When that miraculous event happened, Najgy called her family together, took us all outside, proudly pointed out the pretty blossoms and we all shed some tears because she was so touched that her decidedly not green thumb had changed colors overnight. Sadly, it was not to be permanent. Four O’clocks are not meant to be perennials and death came with the first frost. However, Najgy was a master at growing a vegetable garden where corn, tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, okra and cantaloupes grew in abundance. She had a built-in crew to help her take care of it.
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