JOY ALONG THE WAY: GOLDENROD RUSH IS ON EVERY SEPTEMBER

"The goldenrod is yellow!" So goes the old, beloved September poem, remembered by many who had to memorize it. Those memorizers were the ones who took great bouquets of the yellow flowers to their returning teacher or to a new teacher with whom they sought to find favor.

There was no shortage of goldenrod flowers along the country lanes and in fence rows. Each participating pupil could make an arrangement of them and, if it didn't suit him or her, it could be thrown away and started all over again.

Just a simple bouquet in a blue Mason jar never seemed quite enough. Some picked the blooming lavender, wild asters and purple iron weed to mix in with the goldenrod. If chicory was still available, it was highly satisfactory, especially if a ribbon-sized piece of chicory blue fabric could be found and tied around the neck of the jar.

Although these were early times for my generation, it was past times for my generation for drinking goldenrod tea. This tea was made by simply boiling leaves and flowers of the goldenrod together and straining the resulting liquid. Grandma said it was supposed to make one stronger. Mama said it only strengthened one's will to be strong so as not to need the tea.

We did use the boiled flowers to make a dye. A few decades ago I did this, if only to see if it worked. I still use the fringed pale yellow napkins that resulted from my experiment. The color never faded with countless washings.

I still have goldenrod in my flower border, although my helper calls them lightning rods. She laughs at herself when she makes the mistake, but I can see how it happens. The goldenrod stalks are like straight rods and the flowers are orange-yellow.

Goldenrod will take over a flower bed if one is not watchful. I am watchful, but still I once let them grow until there was a hearty patch of them. At this time of year I would tie a piece of twine around the patch, gathering stalks together until it took on the contours of a shock of wheat. It was pretty, I thought. So did some photographers who took pictures of it. But, lest it root out all the other pretties, a few years ago, when I could do it, I spaded up the whole clump and threw it away. After all, I reasoned, if I wanted to see goldenrod I knew where some were in the nearby and approachable hedgerow.

This year, there it was again along the lattice fence, smack in the flower border, two stalks of goldenrod. I let them grow. One didn't do well so it had to go, but the other was a perfect specimen of a goldenrod. It is now over six feet tall. It has ten flowering fernlike fronds, golden yellow and fuzzy. While still young, it grew through a space in the lattice, then, farther up, curled back through on its original growing side. Clever goldenrod, thus assisting its own braced stalk in case I forgot to take care of this.

Instead of looking like a shock of wheat, it now appears to have opened a yellow umbrella, not to prevent raindrops from falling through but to make a suitable landing place for the late bees. They flock to it as to some reunion, remembering their earlier clover days.

I never see the word "goldenrod" on any jar of honey, but it is said to have a special tang, much better than that of the tea, I'm sure.

Rejoice!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.