My mother’s garden

S ue Clark has a little garden in her backyard in the Spokane Valley. It isn’t large, but it is planted with a lot of love.

Clark’s mother, Esther Hart Rydblom, died in 1953 at the age of 56. Clark was 24.

“I was in college at the time and it was very hard,” Clark says. “It’s hard to lose your mother at any age.”

Later, when Clark’s childhood home was being demolished to make way for road expansion, she dug up her mother’s peonies and irises and transplanted them to her home.

“I have her two red peony bushes and her yellow iris,” Clark said. “They are the same plants she had, and they are more than 50 years old.”

Each year, when her mother’s flowers bloom, Clark is reconnected to her.

“I just think of her all the time when I’m in the yard,” Clark says. “She didn’t have a lot, but the fact that her flowers are still growing keeps her alive.”