“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”- Pablo Neruda
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Buddha once held up a flower to his disciples and asked each of them to say something about it. One pronounced a lecture. Another a poem. Yet another a parable. Each trying to outdo the other in depth and erudition. Mahakashyap smiled and said nothing. Only he had seen the flower. Anthony de Mello: The Song of the Bird, "Label makers" Do not go to the garden of flowers!
O Friend! go not there; In your body is the garden of flowers. Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty. The shortest days in the year have come- at least in the Northern Hemisphere- bringing along a lot of bleak and gloomy moments. Unfortunately, the so called "moments" seem to last far too long, which is sheer torture leading to physical and emotional deprivation. We all need extra energy to endure the dark, merciless hibernation and finally survive. Hoping for lighter and longer days, how about a sip of healthy infusion of red petals and fruit? Why red? You will know the moment you have finish watching the slideshow below. Just give it a go...
 A yellow flower
(Light and spirit) Sings by itself For nobody. A golden spirit (Light and emptiness) Sings without a word By itself Let no one touch this gentle sun In whose dark eye Someone is awake. (No light, no gold, no name, no colour And no thought: O, wide awake!) A golden heaven Sings by itself A song for nobody. Thomas Merton  That it is high time we planted their corms. Right now! The summer is in a hurry to leave us but before it mercilessly vanishes we have some homework to do. It is quite a lot of hard work unless someone finds digging holes in the ground enjoyable and relaxing. De gustibus non est disputandum!
Planting crocuses requires a little planning but first of all it requires new corms. The garden centers are full of them, carefully labelled with a lot of important tips. I suggest that we concentrate on the flower size and flowering period of the crocuses we are about to purchase. Crocuses vary from quite small (and usually the most early ones) to relatively big, flowering a week o two later then the previous ones. These two characteristics let us prolong the festival of bright whites, yellows and purples so that we can get a fair reward for our late summer toil with a trowel. In order to make that reverie real, look for a real trowel. Right now!  Little Swords means Gladioli. The word Gladiator sounds like a close relative and it really is. Only semantically. The brave but heartbreaking fate of gladiators is well known to everybody. The fate of gladioli is less tearjerking but definitely more colourful although it is in our hands too.
Few other plants offer such a variety of colors except for blue hues. However, the lavender blue shades of some cultivars are so close to true blues that we should not complain. But there must be something more about the name of these plants, not only that straight reference to their sword-shaped leaves. Hardly any other flowering plants look so untidy grown in a flower bed. But the moment you pick them and put them in a vase, you can witness a real transformation. They look great! That is why gladioli are grown primarily for cutting, not others but to be cut. Well, now it looks more like the gladiators' fate, doesn't it? Maybe this is the actual source of their Latin name? |
AuthorI was destined to be born gardener. In order to become a professional one I had to enjoy years of studying at various schools and universities... read more Archives
May 2017
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