When I am driving on a rural road, one of the pleasures is in viewing the flowers that grow by the roadside. Have you not noticed them? Yes, they grow along all rural roads, and along any road that has unmaintained sections along the roadside. Seeing them has always been a joy to me, yet it has always been a puzzle to me that they grow along the edge of the road, but not three feet away from the road. Their prevalence makes it appear as though some unknown gardener, in the tradition of Johnny Appleseed, plants them there. For many years, this has been an idle curiosity of mine, sometimes springing up when I see a row of flowers, but then receding as my mind shifts to other topics. So, while this was on my mind recently, I decided to pose the question to a social media site to see what answers might surface. I was not disappointed.

It doesn’t happen. That was the general response, and I was not surprised. We go through this life, not seeing the little things that are all around us. Do roadside flowers enter many conversations? No, and their existence does not stop pollution, reduce our carbon footing, or solve world hunger. This response just tells me that I’m asking the wrong people.

Flowers are everywhere. That response was also anticipated. If one sits in a box and does not look at reality, one can say that seeds are distributed widely and randomly and therefore flowers should be seen in many places and not isolated along a roadside. This response I feel is similar to the prior one, refusing to contemplate that flowers might appear in a pattern that is universal along roadsides. If it doesn’t make sense, then it doesn’t exist.

God plants the flowers there. That response was unexpected and interesting. I can accept that, if what one sees is not understood, then another solution needs to be quickly confirmed. People do not enjoy experiencing anything that does not have an answer. This response has always been with us, as our ancestors believed that it was God who made the sun come up in the morning.

Birds plant the seeds there. This was the first response that demanded my attention on what contributions birds make to the distribution of seeds. While this was entertaining, I could not find any part of the idea as a workable explanation.

Rainwater runoff feeds the flowers. WOW! Rainwater. Yes. Yes. That would explain it. Most roads, rural especially, have rounded edges on each side to accelerate the runoff of rainwater. And that would cause the soil at the roadside to have a much higher percentage of moisture than soil just a for so farther away. Simple solutions are the best solutions, yet simple solutions are often not seen because they are so simple. I will mark this concern on why flowers grow by the roadside as solved.

So, does any of this matter? Not really. What was important to me was the conversation itself, enjoying the variety of ideas presented and the various views of the issue itself. Those who felt that flowers don’t grow along the roadside aren’t wrong; they just have their thoughts and dreams elsewhere. I also love the idea that flowers grow everywhere: such a beautiful view of this world from that perspective. The expressed belief that God plants flowers touched me, as the view that this world has oversight from a supreme being shows faith in the value of everything we see. The comment about birds was a refreshing reminder that it is through birds that many of our flowers and trees and planted around the planet. Rainwater runoff as a solution was a refreshing reminder that the vegetation growing in the wild is self-sustaining, part of our global ecosystem. So much of what we see as complex is often just a simple system beyond our grasp.