Usually by the time Memorial Day arrived, my Grandaddy's flower garden would be ready to provide enough flowers for several beautiful cemetery bouquets.  I always volunteered to help Grandad pick the flowers.   Each year, we saved empty coffee cans, to serve as large vases for the flowers on Memorial Day.  We would put water in the bottom of the coffee cans, to keep the flowers fresh for the ten mile drive from the farm to Boulder's Green Mountain Cemetery.

I remember helping to pick the bright orange poppies, with their heavy heads nodding in the Colorado breeze. The lovely iris were usually next, with their delicate lavender and deep purple hues. Next we would pick some bright, waxy buttercups that grew in the shade next to Grandad's porch. Stately gladiolas and sturdy daffodils were also added to the bouquet.   Then Grandad would take his pocketknife, and carefully cut branches of snowball blossoms off of his snowball tree. I haven't seen a snowball tree in years, but I can still remember how the  round clusters of blossoms looked  just like fluffy snowballs hanging from the branches. The lilacs from my Mother's lilac bush were the last pretty addition we made to our collection.