A horse..err..flower of a different color!

My new Spirea made from a cutting!  

The Spirea..commonly known as Bridalwreath..is blooming.  Last week, I could not even tell the bush was living and this week...booom!..there are white flowers everywhere!  Surely, this means spring is here!  I have long associated this bush with spring and Easter.  Why, you may ask?  I have no clue..just always have.  Perhaps it is because of the colors!  Ok..I know..Spirea is mostly white.  Mostly!  Mine does not stay white for long!  Ever since I was a little squirt, these flowers would be pinks, blues, greens, yellows and..well, white!  Why and how?  It was a learning situation for us as kids.  You remember..."A plant draws water up through its roots and stem all the way to the leaves and flowers."  Boring!  Unless...you were around creative adults that did not care if you made an occasional mess!

All that is needed to make multicolored Spirea blooms!

Now, back to the tie to Easter!  These fabulous colors were acquired through food coloring or better known to kids as Easter Egg Dye!  Mom never used food colorings much any other time of the year but at Eastertime...watch out!  We always knew when Easter was near simply because Pop would bring a box of the colorings home from the store!  Woo hoo!  Easter was on its way!!!  On the farm there was usually plenty of eggs for us to dye so Mom would boil up a heap of them!  Then with the kitchen table covered with newspapers, the whole family would gather to dye eggs!  This usually went well, until Pop would invariably start showing us how to dye half of an egg one color then hold it upside down in another color!  Two-colored eggs were much more interesting than single-colored eggs so we all had to try and eventually our cups of dye resembled mud!  Mud-colored eggs do not have the same attraction as the beautifully hued eggs that were dyed in clean dyes.  Still, it was fun and no eggs were any worse for wear.  That Easter Bunny would come and hide all fifty or so (sometimes more!) eggs even the murky, muddy ones! And we would eat deviled eggs and potato salad for the next week!  But..now I have rambled far from the Spirea!

And we are finished!  Today's dyes do not do nearly as well as the older ones.

That same dye that was used to make pretty eggs for the Easter Bunny also made pretty flowers for our table on Easter Day!  Mom would try to salvage the dyes to use for the flowers.  Spirea, being snow-white, was the bloom of choice..plus its habit of blooming early made it even more desirable!  She would pick a lovely bouquet of the long sprays of tiny,  rose-shaped flowers.  These were brought inside but not arranged in a vase right away.  The leftover dyes would be poured into canning jars which were taller than the egg-dying cups.  No extra water was added.  The branches of Spirea were divided among the canning jars of dyes with just the cut tips of the branches in the solution. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the stems to draw the color up into the flowers! Usually in just a few minutes, the flowers in the darker dyes would start to show a slight tinge of color.  Within a couple of hours, the tiny white flowers would change to the colors of the dyes!  If left too long, though, the flowers would wither and start to drop from the branches.  (Perhaps those food dyes are not so healthy for us either even though they are claimed to be safe for human consumption!  Wither and dropping?  Hmmm?)  Just in the nick of time, Mom would retrieve her flowers and arrange them in a large vase!  This would adorn our table for Easter dinner!  Throughout the meal, a dusting of tiny, multicolored petals would be showering down upon the white tablecloth!  It was magical!  So..the Bridalwreath is associated with Easter..and Easter Egg Dye..and food dye stains on the tablecloth..and Mom..and happy times as a kid!  It is no wonder that I like these flowers!