Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

  Wildflowers, that is.  The kids, as usual, entered the "Wildflowers" category for the Schaghticoke Fair.  Seems simple: each of you just go pick a bunch of wildflowers.  But trying to find them is not as easy as you might think, not anymore.  Oops, the purplestrife across the road from our house unexpectedly got mowed down just the week before.  I guess the highway workers are still compensating for a snowless winter.  So we'll try the ball field, maybe along the fence.  Also mowed and neatly trimmed.  We drove along, looking in the ditches, but they'd all been recently mowed also.  We finally found some along the roadside, but the area was much too dangerous. One doesn't want to stop and pick wildflowers anywhere near  where flowers have been planted as a memorial.            The village playground had a few growths of Goldenrod near the back roadside border.  I usually try to avoid this plant because so many are allergic to it, but we're getting desperate.  Greg, armed with scissors, exits the car, cuts  what he thinks would constitute a wildflower bouquet worthy of being an entry, and deposits them in the back seat next to his brother, who yelps, "A bee is in there!  And I got stung in the forehead once, and I really didn't like it!"  I tell him not to move until we get home, where the kids left the car and I was left to remove  flowers and  bee.  That was Entry #1.
    Right next to the front door of our house is a growth of yellow flowers resembling Black-Eyed-Susans, but much taller, which mysteriously appeared just this spring.  I don't remember having planted them, so we deemed them wildflowers, and the bee-intimidated one safely snipped off several of the blossoms.  Entry #2 was satisfied.
    The third and last entry was the most iffy.  Some tall plant with what could conceivably be called a flower at the top qualified, at least in our state of wildflower fatigue.