Overcoming nature blindness does a strange thing to you when you travel: You start to pay an inordinate amount of attention to the local plants, sometimes to the annoyance of the folks with whom you’re traveling. When I was in upstate New York last month, I couldn’t help but notice the forsythia.
They were everywhere. You couldn’t miss their abundant yellow blossoms amidst the mostly barren branches, as Spring was just starting to emerge there. I saw them by the Finger Lakes, off the sides of the roads, and in just about every garden I passed. Much to my partner’s chagrin, every time I saw one, I would point and exclaim, “Forsythia!”
It turns out that this was no accident. In the early 1950s, the Ithaca Garden Club embarked on a major campaign to plant forsythia all over the region. They planted over 10,000 of these beautiful shrubs, earning the city the nickname, “Forsythia City.”
Last week, I was in Southern California visiting my parents. My Dad asked me how my bonsai dabblings were going. I pulled up photos of some of my projects, including some cuttings I had taken from my parents a few years earlier. My Mom quietly listened to me talk, then asked, “Do you know what 개나리 (gaenari) are?”
I shook my head.
She started telling me about these shrubs that were harbingers of spring in Korea and how her father (who died when she was 11) used to plant them around their garden. As I listened to her stories, I looked them up on my phone, then laughed, “Oh my gosh. They’re forsythia!”
I told her about my adventures in upstate New York and pulled up photos from my trip to show her. Then I asked, “What made you think of them?”
She replied, “Listening to you talk reminded me of my Dad.” Then tears started welling up in her eyes.
Later, I searched for “forsythia” in my photo album to see if it would be smart enough to find my photos. It not only found several, it also pulled up a photo and video of a bouquet I had taken almost exactly nine years earlier with my parents at a coffee shop in Newport Beach.
My Mom had spotted the bouquet and asked me if I knew what they were. Her reaction to the flowers moved me enough that I asked her to let me record them on video. She even sang a Korean children’s song about them.
Apparently, I quickly forgot about this encounter and about forsythia in general. I don’t think I’ll forget this time.