It’s Time

It’s a bit embarrassing for me to admit this. I didn’t do it on purpose, nor did I expect such an incredible, showy display. I didn’t mean for this to get so public, so unavoidable. When my wife and I planted so many seeds from a mix that I bought online, this was never the intent. But no matter how hard I tried to keep this just between us, between our family and our lot lines, this just happened. Nature cannot be stopped. This is why I now have a front yard riddled with cone flowers. You say, But David, I also have cone flowers. You may, but if you drove by my house today it’s obvious that I have all of the coneflowers. Every last one of them. In my yard, just blooming and blooming, unaware of the attention they draw even while I hide in the house, embarrassed by this display that puts Holland and their scant tulips to shame.

But it isn’t just my house and my property, as much as I wish it were, it’s everywhere. Drive Wisconsin today. Do it. Just get in your car and drive here. If you’re looking for high quality water in an elite level vacation home market, then, of course, you must come to Lake Geneva. But if you’re just looking to take a drive, drive here, drive anywhere, just come to Wisconsin. In the summer, the margins of Florida roads look like they do in the winter. Alligators, terrible, terrible alligators. And some garbage blown from open car windows, and some swampy water. That’s Florida. Unless you’re inland Florida, which is more like a desert plagued by skinny cows, the sorts that look like we should take up an offering and send our Wisconsin missionaries to offer them some aid. These cows are ridiculous, so if you’re driving through Florida today you’ll see alligators and/or skinny, sickly cows. What’s the fun in that?

That’s why you should be driving here, down these country roads, past fields and forests and lakes and rivers. The flowers in my purposeful patch might be amazing, and you’re welcome to drive by, but the sides of every road in this state are now on display. There are white flowers, someone knows what they’re called. Some blue ones, too. Lots of blue ones. Some are pink and some are orange.  The clover is blooming, and it’s pink and sometimes red. Other times it might be mostly pink with some white, delicate little flowers that cows munch on because we love our cows so much that we let them eat our beautiful flowers. We have so many, we can spare a few.

We live here because we work here. We live here because this is our home. But if we live here and don’t appreciate just how beautiful this place is, then that’s sad. In the Midwest, we all possess some variety of shoulder chip. It’s there, sometimes large and sometimes small. The people in the mountains tell us it’s flat here. The people by the sea tell us the lakes are small. The people in New York don’t know where the Midwest is. And the people in Switzerland sometimes email me because they’ve confused my lake for theirs. The apology for bothering me, little insignificant me with my little insignificant lake, is remarkably humble and overwhelmingly condescending at once. But this place isn’t inferior to all of those places. It isn’t something less. It’s something more. It’s seasons and fields and forests and lakes, and in the middle of a Wisconsin summer, it’s the most beautiful flower display blooming profusely on the sides of our roads. We didn’t plan it that way, we’re just lucky like that.