Johnny Appleseed, Swedenborg, and the Pink Flamingos 🦩 of Leominster

Reflections from the birthplace of two American originals — an apple planter and a flamingo maker.

Along Route 2 in Leominster, Massachusetts, the Johnny Appleseed Visitor Center welcomes travelers with apple trees, local crafts, and a touch of roadside wonder.

It’s the birthplace of John Chapman — better known as Johnny Appleseed — and, fittingly, also the birthplace of the pink flamingo lawn ornament, created here in 1957 by Don Featherstone at Union Products.

One man planted seeds; the other planted smiles.

Both, in their own way, filled the landscape with color and meaning.

Chapman was a follower of Emanuel Swedenborg, who taught that everything in nature mirrors the spiritual world — that a tree represents wisdom, fruit represents love, and seeds carry faith itself.

Johnny lived that vision: walking barefoot, eating simply, and practicing a gentle vegetarianism born of compassion.

More than two centuries later, Featherstone turned that same creative impulse into pink plastic — a reminder that joy can also be sacred, and that humor belongs beside holiness.

On October 3, the 33rd anniversary of our first proposal, we stopped beneath the Johnny Appleseed tree in Leominster.

That was where I proposed again — the third proposal of the year — surrounded by apples, leaves, and the hum of the highway.

The next day, October 4, we celebrated our convalidation ceremony, which happened to fall on my parents’ 56th wedding anniversary, in the same church where they had been married.

My wife wore the dress my mother made and wore fifty-six years ago.

Before leaving Leominster, we picked up a pair of pink flamingos from the visitor center as a gift for my parents — a small symbol of joy, continuity, and love renewed.

Somewhere between Swedenborg’s heaven and Featherstone’s imagination, beneath those apple branches in Leominster, I was reminded:

Paradise can sprout anywhere — even at a highway rest stop.

— Written in gratitude for the roots that keep blooming.