Pretty Pink Flowers...

When I was a very little girl I knew very little of what my father's job entailed.  I knew he farmed and farmed a crop that caused him a lot of trouble.  He'd come home and talk of the suckers and clay dirt and I would think he was talking of candy and play-dough.

Turns out he was talking about tobacco.  The crop that in a very few short years I would grow very familiar with-- tobacco. 

It grows green from a very small seed that will result in a baby plant that has to be transplanted by hand from a greenhouse to the field.

The plant itself, depending on what type of soil it matures in and weather conditions, can grow to be almost taller than myself. And once it matures it shoots out this beautiful pink flower, right out the top.

As a little girl I couldn't understand why in the world would anyone want those beautiful pink flowers out of the plant.  I remember one afternoon my parents pulling into a field of tobacco and walking down the rows popping out the tops, those beautiful pink flowers, and throwing them on the ground.  I walked behind them, my sister and I, and picked up the bunches and made wedding bouquets.

How pretty they were! 

They were very pretty until it was time to go.  When I put them down, I discovered sticky hands.  My greatest fear!  I hate sticky and still do to this day.  The tar and the gum wouldn't come off by wiping my hands on my shorts.  It would take a good washing in hot water and Lava soap to rid them of that sticky residue.  I was throughly disgusted by the pretty pink flowers...

I later learned that the pretty pink flowers take away nutrients from the plant and cause the tobacco leaf to weigh less.  Since you sell tobacco by the pound, you want the leaf to have more weight, therefore the pink flowers have to come out... along with the suckers that grow between the leaf and the stalk.

a picture of a sucker on a trash pile of tobacco

To think, once, I thought that my daddy grew candy and had mountains of play dough that he wouldn't share with me!