The latter part of May has eternally articulated a consummate declaration of the metaphysical and elemental joy implicit in Man’s invaluable franchise of life.
At this time of year, we awaken to a renewed awareness of the privileged life franchise on Earth, albeit with its concomitant challenges and disappointments, by the Planet’s eternal floral emergence.
From our earliest years, we have maintained a reverent and aesthetic love of plants and flowers, and their nurturance, to the extent of our emotional need to salute them in verse. We have recollections of early childhood and placing a cut carrot top or lima bean in a saucer of water for hopeful germination. Later in married life, we delighted in growing and nurturing plants; first in pots, and later as homeowners in a coveted flower garden.
Warm recollections reappear of a lifetime of passion for growing floral plants, which display their colorful bloom from late Spring until Autumn. We can recall the joy of kneeling on knee pads while installing starter plants, bulbs, and corms, watering them, and later, enjoying and taking some personal reaffirmation in their mature bloom. Our notable favorites have always been May’s “late tulips,” shooting up from
simple, onion-like bulbs containing requisite nourishment pending the flower’s emergence, enabling it to dine on photosynthesis. We have warm memories of a trip to the Netherlands in the second week of May and being flabbergasted at the beauty of the colorful tulip exhibits at the internationally famous. Keukenhof Gardens. (See: “True Love and Tulips,” our perennial Valentine’s Day publication.)
We always had a penchant for the “art” of pruning floral shrubs. The properly considered technique in pruning and guiding the growth of such beautiful shrubs may be included among the most aesthetically rewarding skills in horticulture.
Nevertheless, with the natural progress to our later years (notably inclusive of the need for a walker), our physical capabilities have been attenuated, including, sadly, the capability to continue to perform the enjoyable physical activities associated with maintaining a flower garden. Similar to our ubiquitous physical adjustments, contextual to the later years, we have, as necessary, abridged our physical activities to accord with the features of the octogenarian era of life; nevertheless, we have endeavored to, as much as possible, replicate the pleasurable activities performed at the earlier stages of more efficient physical capability.
Today is the happily anticipated annual trip to the flower farms for the exciting and joyful purchase of seasonal floral beauty for installation (with the aid of a hard chair), the purchased Spring lovelies for maturation and display in our extensive outdoor flower boxes and planters.
We count ourselves extremely fortunate to be enabled to reprise, to the extent physically possible, our lifetime enjoyment of Spring’s glorious floral abundance.
-p.
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