Mid-July. The flower is back.

In a world that’s mostly greens (so many wonderful shades of green) with some tans (I do try to overlook the early reds), the tall crimson spikes stand out sharply, even if across the lake.

It took a kayak (or was it still a canoe?) trip back then to get to see this magnificent flower up close. Two to five feet in height with scarlet flowers over an inch long (and plenty of those) (“corolla 1 1/2″ long, 2-lipped, upper corolla lip 2-lobed, split between lobes; lower corolla lip 3-lobed” if you want to be precise), this is absolutely (thanks to the Audubon guide) “one of our handsomest deep red wildflowers.”

Indeed. And what that scientific description is telling you is that the flowers look – well, sort of – like a lot of fingers waving around. Peterson does it all: “America’s favorite … Our illustration explains far better than description.”

I continued as the early years passed to admire it – always at a distance.

Then fortune brought Joyce and Milt Shelgren as visitors. Old-timers in the Jamestown area will certainly remember both with deep affection.

For many years Joyce wrote a nature column for The Post-Journal. I doubt if I’d be in error if I credit my awakening to the joys of nature to those columns. I know when I moved to Cassadaga I knew nothing. (It took a cousin – not much later – to even point out the weeds. Egads!)

Joyce and I met – and, of course with Joyce, one became a friend – because of her love and ability on the violin. I was very involved with the Warren Civic Orchestra and somehow enticed her to come down and play with us. (The gulf between Warren and Jamestown continues as does that between Jamestown and Fredonia-Dunkirk for the most part. Being an outsider, I have never understood.)

Joyce and Milt came for lunch at just the right time for the cardinal flower to be doing its best. (Incidentally, the thinking goes that the name may refer to the bright red bird so named or to the robes worn by Roman Catholic cardinals.) Joyce of course pointed it out – joyfully, I needn’t add – and identified it at once.

Since then, on a few occasions at least, it has managed to cross the lake and pop up closer to shore where good photographs are far easier than what I’d probably get in my kayak. (I do OK. I enjoy. But a kayak will always be tippy – particularly if I’m concentrating on pictures and not sitting erect as I should.)

Found only along stream banks and in damp meadows, I’m grateful for the stream – and lake.

More grateful of course to have known this special couple – and to have a flower reappear annually to remind me of them.

One time they visited Milt brought a piece of art he’d made: a stack of firewood beside a barn. The right side has a painted sky above a wood stack composed entirely of small wooden “logs,” a photograph of his (for that is what he was probably best known for) of an old barn is in the middle, and a black and white sketch of winter trees on the far left. Certainly unique, I treasure it every time I pass the wall where it has always hung (often, I assure you, indeed).

They were also here close to Christmas for they admired a pair of nodding cloth-covered reindeer I had inherited from my mother. While certainly handsome, these required the antlers to be removed for safe storage. Trouble was, once apart, I could never remember if those serious antlers pointed forward, a major threat in my eyes, or backwards, so a lowered head would jab one and all.

Milt crafted a small wood figure with foil antlers for me. These were placed correctly, the shorter end in front.

Flower for summertime and memories again come December.

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Susan Crossett has lived outside Cassadaga for more than 20 years. A lifetime of writing led to these columns as well as two novels. Her Reason for Being was published in 2008 with Love in Three Acts appearing last year. Copies are available at the Cassadaga ShurFine and Papaya Arts on the Boardwalk in Dunkirk. Information on all the Musings, the books and the author may be found at Susancrossett.com.