52nd City

Haunted by Hardy Mums

Although I received a very healthy pot of mums last year as a house-warming present (and planted them in the yard, where they are now aggresively trying squeeze the lavender out for plot space) it doesn't seem to me that St. Louis was quite as mum-crazy last year. I know they're in season, but...really, it's out of control!

Last Saturday, Soulard, I heard some vendor endlessly hollering "HARDY MUMS...HARDY MUMS...HARDY MUMS!" no matter what building I happened to be in. On Sunday, at the Best of Missouri Market, all the ladies with wheelie shopping carts weren't picking up exotic varieties of dwarf Japanese cherry trees; they were crazy for mums, mums and more mums. Overheard conversations, two or three times, enthusing about mums.

And today, at the Schnuck's in Clayton, I saw a veritable psychedelia garden planted near the front door; of course it was all hardy mums, as out of control as ever, deep purply red and bright white ones, planted in alternating stripes. They were so fluffy and brightly-colored, they didn't look like mums at all. Inside, near the shopping carts, there were dozens and dozens of hardy mums, exploding out of their pots like flowery mushroom clouds. There were some that were large enough I'd worry about fitting them into the back seat of my car.

I'm used to hardy mums that look, well, hardy. Like they have been scrapping it out in an alley somewhere. The yellow ones always look to me like they are coated in three days' worth of car exhaust. They're city flowers, like geraniums and petunias and marigolds. Not that pretty, but they survive the tailpipe fumes and peeing dogs. I'm like most people in that I avoid more delicate plants, at least in the front of the house, and go for the coarse, urban flora, like the humble and hardy Christanthemum. But I'm confused: is this mum love a bit of St. Louis city culture I have totally missed up until now - or is it something new?