Over the hills of Spanish Fort and through the woods surrounding them, there lives a delightful family — gardener Merle Compton, her husband Webb and a 20-pound cat named Rambunctious.  

 Since retirement several years back, they have all settled nicely into the garden home nestled into their small, flower-bordered property. 

 “I grew up on the family farm out in the country,” Merle shares. “We had a nice vegetable garden with tomatoes and butterbeans back then. I always loved flowers, but when I married Webb, he was in the army and traveled around for a while.” 

 Then, Merle and Webb had four children, and Merle went to work at Regions Bank for 40 years to help send all of her children to college without having to take out student loans.  

 “When I retired, we lived in the country for a while and then bought a van, and we traveled out West to see the sights and visit our children,” Merle says. “After my parents died, we left the old farmstead and moved down here to Spanish Fort. I began looking through catalogues, ordering bulbs and planting flowers — finally!" 

 At 81, this well-loved mother and grandmother (who celebrated her 80 

^th

  birthday by zip-lining through the mountains) does all of her own planting and gardening chores while caring for her ailing husband. 

 Their four grown children live from California to Florida and admire their mother's garden when they come to visit.  

 “We have three daughters and a son of our own,” Merle shares. “And we have one other special daughter who asked us to adopt her, so we did and we count her as one of our children.” 

 This multi-talented lady is an expert quilter of many years, proudly displaying a gorgeous, museum quality example of her work — a quilt in which she painstakingly embroidered all 50 state birds. 

 Although Merle has grown vegetables in the past, her charming cottage style garden is filled with beds of pansies and brilliant pink and yellow mandevilles, (both among her favorites), petunias, azaleas and a beloved snowball bush, which she moved here from back home in the country. She also grows irises and a few herbs. 

 "Since Webb and I don't travel as much now, I love looking through catalogues and admiring flowers I really like," Merle says. "I just like working in the soil. I find much satisfaction these days growing beautiful things and just being in nature."  

 She has a watering system to take care of that chore, but this active gardener handles her own weeding and planting.  

 “I just can't stand sitting still,” she says. 

 One of the best parts of gardening to Merle's way of thinking is being able to cut fresh flowers to bring inside. She enjoys them in the garden and in vases adding their cheer to her home. 

 Flower growers know that flowers are magic — irresistible life forms to birds, bees, wasps and humans. They make our world more beautiful; they smell good and just seem to make folks happier. 

 Our ancestors, in the not-so-distant past, tended to grow only what was useful. But nowadays, many people try to balance the hectic busy pace of life with a quiet appreciation of the beauty found in Mother Nature's flowers. 

 Merle Compton and Mother Nature make quite a team-fashioning, color-filled flower garden of both annuals and perennials for family, friends and passers by to enjoy on pleasant spring and summer days.