The sun was getting low in the sky as a mother and her children entered the Garden of Hope on a mid-July evening.
The young daughter pointed to a flower.
“What is this one?”
“That’s a daisy,” her mother said.
“What’s this one?”
“That’s a lily.”
Then the girl pointed to a stem of green and brown pods.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know.”
Overhearing the conversation, I couldn’t help but jump in.
“Those are lupins.”
“Oh!” the mother said.
“When the lupins fade, they leave behind the green pods. As the green pods dry out, they turn brown and eventually they will open and drop their seeds to the ground to make more lupins,” I said.
I pulled a brown pod off a stem and pressed it open as I would a pea. Inside there were several round brown seeds.
The young girl opened a green pod.
“My seeds are green.”
“That means they are not quite ready yet,” I said.
I handed her the brown seeds.
“Take these home and plant them. In a couple years you will have lupins!”
In early June, lupins fill the fields and ditches on Prince Edward Island with vibrant blooms of purple, pink and white – nature’s way of saying, “a beautiful summer is on its way.”
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