The first fuchsia I ever saw was hanging on my friend Vicky Owen's front porch, a little ballerina of a flower. It seemed magical to me like everything in this part of the world--the muted roar of the branch that ran in front of their old cabin, the dance of the hummingbirds feeding in the fluffy pink flowers of the mimosa tree just below the porch, the lilt of the fiddle and dulcimer--back in Chapel Hill, Vicky and Malcom had been members of the Fuzzy Mountain String Band.
My Mothers' Day fuchsias are going strong, thanks to frequent watering. And I've actually rooted some -- a first for me. Besides being beautiful, fuchsias hold a special lovely memory for me.
In 1973, John and I and not-quite-one Ethan were on a quest to find a new place to live--more nature and fewer people. Florida had become too hot and way too crowded. We were headed north to look at some land in New York state, maybe even in Canada.
But, first, we stopped to visit my old college friend Vicky and her husband on the farm they'd bought only a year ago. After navigating the winding river road from Asheville and finding our way to the Barnard bridge, our hand-drawn map assured us we were almost there--only eight miles! In Florida, that's about eight minutes.
The road up Big Pine is winding and narrow with steep drop offs here and there. That eight miles seemed to take an hour and a half, and we were at the point of turning around, sure we were in the wrong place, when we spotted a landmark the map had shown.
We turned off, at last, onto the road up to the cabin. It was full of large rocks that our Scout could just barely crawl over. But at last we found our friends, ensconced in the old house they were slowly renovating. And I drank in the beauty of the land and felt the appeal of the simple mountain life our friends were living.
What was going to be a brief visit turned into a search for land and an introduction to a community.
And here we are, with fuchsias on our own front porch and grateful memories of departed friends.
