“Up in the Morning - American Robin and Spring Flowers,” an original acrylic painting, copyright by Susan A Walton, S. A. Walton Studio, Hudson, Florida.

An American Robin pauses near a pottery vessel full of spring flowers. The pottery vase is from Mississippi Mud pottery in western Illinois.

The title comes from a song my mother used to sing in the morning on Saturdays, when my brother was a teen trying to sleep in. She would pause outside his door in between washing and drying clothes, and when she wanted him up, she would belt out the song, “Up in the morning, out after dawn… work like the Devil for my pay…,” finally blasting him with the part “…and that LAZY OLD SUN, got nothin’ to do, but roll around Heaven all day!” Time for the son to get up.

She loved flowers of all kinds, weeds, vines, old standbys like tulips and daffodils, dogwoods, peonies, German irises - any and all flowers. Over the years we gradually filled what had been a bland, suburban middle-class yard with plants and spring bulbs of all kinds, in order to have something to look forward to through dreary winter months to come.

She would get very excited when the first green leaves of hyacinths would emerge, and I recall how “Heaven-scented” they were, pardon my pun. Crocus, jonquils, and daffodils, tulips, and tiny squill and muscari, none of them native, yet all of them a Godsend of pure joy in an otherwise brown and gray steel town.

Speaking of gray — when my mother was a child, her father, who had served in the Navy, where almost everything is painted gray, could not stand it and made a point of painting his house bright yellow. His favorite spring flower was yellow tulips, and he is responsible for my mom’s habit of buying flower bulbs by mail, and for teaching her the ways of a gardener.

Some wild phlox are depicted here because that little native woodland flower was her own mother’s favorite. I loved them too, but also have a special place in my heart for the delicate pheasant’s eye daffodil seen amid the other flowers in the vase.

As it happens, the Pheasant’s Eyes daffodils were a prize that I triumphantly brought home from school one day and presented to my Mom. They were acquired from an elderly teacher when I was in 4th or 5th grade, a man other students called The Wiz. I never used his nickname, only referring to him as Mr. Wizniewski. He originally hailed from Poland, which was at that time a country imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain, and this fact was intriguing enough that I wanted to ask him about it and how he came to the U.S. , if I ever had the chance.

I could tell he loved his job so much he would probably do it for no pay at all, if he had to. He could have retired years before, but he didn’t, and that was so unusual that only one other teacher, a Navy vet, was even close in age to him. He and The Wiz were real educators, not babysitters.

The Wiz was a teacher in whose class everyone hoped to land because it would never be dull.

Other kids less shy than I were always crowding around Mr. Wizniewski, so I wrote off the possibility of ever getting near enough to him to ask about the Iron Curtain or how he came to the US.

We were pleasantly surprised one day in the cafeteria, when Mr. Wizniewski approached our table, where we shy, sometimes “invisible” kids always sat.

Bringing lunch to school rather than eating what the cafeteria offered, I usually carried a red Igloo cooler once the old steel “The Waltons” lunch box started to look rough and fell out of favor. My brother carried a huge and fully loaded brown paper grocery bag; I am sure he had quite an impact on my folks’ food budget.

Most of the time our lunches consisted of fried egg or peanut butter on wheat bread, or occasionally a thermos of leftover soup. There were a couple of times where shrimp cocktail was lunch, due to my folks’ financing of family trips to Florida by selling fresh, wild Gulf shrimp out of our garage. In those days it was a very rare thing to see seafood in the grocery stores in the Midwest, so most of my friends didn’t even know what they were, and thought it was a very weird lunch. My mom liked to bake, so sometimes there would be peanut butter cookies or something special to take along, but not that often.

I was about to finish my sandwich and dig into that day’s “something special” - a slice of my mother’s homemade fresh strawberry glacé pie, when Mr. Wizniewski cruised up to the table. He chatted with everyone cordially [as if we were adults] but his eyes quickly alighted on that pie.

Strawberry pie was my favorite, but it was only made in springtime after my mom and I had competed with voracious flocks of robins for enough ripe strawberries to make pies. Robins seem to love strawberries more than all other fruits, so it wasn’t easy to gather enough to make pie.

Well, it turns out that strawberry pie was Mr. Wizniewski’s favorite, too. He chatted with everyone for a bit, and then asked if we would mind if he had lunch with us. We quickly made room.

He sat down and opened his own bagged lunch. After a while he got down to business, asking if by chance I would be willing to part with that slice of pie, and what would be acceptable in trade. I couldn’t think of anything normal, of course, so I mentioned that I collected unusual plants. He thought for a while and finally said, “If you’re willing to trade, I’ll bring something tomorrow.”

We shook hands on it, and I slid the slice of pie over to him, reassuring myself with the thought that we still had a little more time to harvest strawberries before they were gone for the season. He dove right in without hesitation, and upon taking the first bite, abruptly paused with a look of pure bliss on his face. I suppose it must have been many years since he had such a pie, and it must have brought memories back of his wife or mother from long ago.

True to his word, the next day he presented me with not one plant, but several freshly dug pheasant’s eye daffodils, and I surprised him with another slice of pie.

I happily took the bulbs home as a gift for Mom. They multiplied year after year, much to our delight.

After that, he took his lunch with us when he was able, and I shared shrimp when I had them, and we talked about gardening a lot and a lot of things I don’t recall, but the questions I had about Poland, not so much, because there were always too many people chattering and lunch was too short. I’m grateful for the time he spared for us, but if I could do it all over again, I would be more persistent about learning his story.

#StrawberryPie #SpringFlowers #AmericanRobin #SpringDecor