When we were kids, my mom used to drag us all over the mountains searching for wildflowers. My grandmother, MawMaw, often came with us, riding in the front seat with Mom while we kids packed ourselves into the back, our slender limbs overlapping.

Mom came from a large family of flower lovers. The brothers tilled wide gardens for summer's crops, and the sisters collected living jewels, decorating their yards with flowers bought, traded, and (occasionally) stolen.

Thrift, for example, must be stolen or it won't grow. And whatever you do, never thank the person from whom you stole it. It's just bad luck.

The world I grew up in was infused with such knowledge. Drink a touch of arbutus tea for certain bodily ailments. Avoid the toxic berries of Jack in the Pulpit. Lady Slippers are shy; they don't transplant well.

Not that that little nugget of wisdom ever stopped my uncle David, one of Mom's younger brothers. He could lift a flower from the woods surrounding his home and transplant it, where it would thrive wherever he placed it, as if it had originally rooted there.

Mom's passion was daylillies. She collected dozens of different varieties after she and Dad built their house in the late '80s, some of which still bloom around the yard. I would like to transplant a few, in her memory, when Dad (finally) moves to his new house, and will definitely move her peony roses, which have budded but not yet bloomed.

The azaleas she planted will likely stay where they are, lining the top of the rock wall, among the birds and bears and other forest visitors to Mom and Dad's back yard. That's fine, as Dad's new yard contains plenty of that species, including a spindly flame azalea growing in the island encircled by his driveway.

Witnessing the orange flowers fully opened reminded me of those long car rides of my childhood spent searching for various flora. Then, we learned the names of local wildflowers and how to spot them. Indian paintbrush, snakeroot, fire pink, wild azaleas, turkey's foot, Carolina lily... So many, I've long since forgotten.

But the memories live on in the touches of color brightening the long days of spring, and in the longing to kneel in the dirt and leave my own legacy in flowers for my son and grandson to remember me by.