Bloom Where You are Planted

by Barbara Jewell

Title

Bloom Where You are Planted

Artist

Barbara Jewell

Medium

Painting - Watercolor

Description

This painting is named in honor of one of my Grandmother's often quoted "wise words for living." Her 97- year-long life "planted " her in many unexpected places; many of them not easy to navigate. She was the child of immigrants making their way in a new country. When she was just a child, in church one day, her parents caught her trying to take money out of the "Poor Box." When reprimanded, she questioned them stating, "Why not? We're poor!" (true!) As a young woman looking for a teaching position in New York City, she was offered a job filling in for a class that she was told, "Had driven out 3 teachers ahead of her!" She accepted the job, determined to establish herself as "firm but fair" and successfully completed the school year. When offered an "easier" position at a "better" school, she declined, saying she was not about to back away from a challenge. As a young, married woman during the 1918 epidemic, she contracted the "Spanish" flu while she was pregnant with my Mom. The fact that they both survived was further testament to her resilience. During the Great Depression, her husband lost every rental property he owned when renters could no longer afford to pay, making it impossible for him to keep up the mortgages. Sometime later when she had three children, her husband contracted tuberculosis, died, leaving her as the sole supporter of her children and two aging parents.
Being the resourceful woman she was, Gram managed to design her own job teaching baking classes for Montana Flour Mills whose flour was in some ways distinctive, calling for adjustments to various recipes. From then on, she was always working at various baking-related jobs, retiring from Hough Bakeries in Cleveland at age 70. (When applying for that job she had taken 5 years off her age on the application in order to increase her chances of being hired!) At various times during her working years she had fallen or in other ways injured a leg or hip, requiring several stays in various nursing homes for recuperation. While there, she did her best to cheer the other patients, often by using her skills at the piano to entertain them with many familiar tunes.
Now to this painting! Spending many months in Colorado over the years, I fell in love with the lupine, which thrive in beautiful abundance in the high altitude meadows. One year, a friend who knew how much I admired them, gave me some seeds to take home with me for planting. At the time, I was living in a second floor apartment in the city with a tiny front yard, virtually no backyard, and just a thin strip of dirt between the outside wall and a concrete walkway. That was where the seeds got planted. Amazingly, to me, this lupine sprouted, grew, and actually "bloomed where it was planted," in this unlikely spot! As I age and find myself in difficult and troubling places, I think of Gram and her always positive outlook; no matter what. In taking a good look at this piece to decide on a title, I seemed to hear her "whispering in my ear," saying, "That's what I was talking about! You've got it, now don't you forget it!"

Uploaded

December 16th, 2023

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