This humble little town is awash in a blaze of blossoms, I swear. And frankly I would be remiss if I did not capture their blessed imagery and share with you, as it won’t last. There are not one but two magnificent tulip trees, as the locals call them, out in front of the local courthouse, formally known as magnolia soulangiana. Don’t you just love it? I see the words “soul” and something with an etymology similar to “angel” in there and it’s not a stretch to sit or stand beneath these breathtakingly beautiful trees and ponder a Soul Angel, let me tell you. I nearly took a ladder down there to really get myself inside their faces, but it escaped me and I accepted that this was, indeed, the human view of a tulip tree. I’m not a bird. And there is nothing shabby about looking from the bottom side up. Not at all. What a blessing.

Meanwhile, back at home, this quince bush is outshining everything else in the garden at the moment, like some mystical burning bush of glory brightening the far back corner. It devours balls tossed for the doggies, so they are forever sorting through the thorny branches to retrieve them, fortunately none the worse for wear.

If you have not been thoroughly saturated with color, take a gander at these camelias who have now joined the ranks of the ones I shot last week:

A closer look:

Can you imagine what it’s like around here at the moment? It’s affecting everyone who lives here. You can feel it. We are soaking it up like hungry piglets, reveling in it, engaged in a visual feast of vibrant color and exquisitely delicate shape and form.

Moving among all these flowers this week I kept thinking about what Eckhart Tolle talked about at the beginning of The New Earth, especially as I did listen to his first workshop with Oprah. [There are 500,000 folks participating from 139 countries simultaneously!! It is not too late to sign up. Just go to oprah.com and register. It’s free and it’s amazing, and you can watch the one you missed.] Eckhart suggests we go into nature and totally and conscientiously reframe from naming anything. Forget the names. Just be with what you find around you. Oprah, a true urbanite at this stage of her life (wouldn’t you think?) told him she tried it out. She said she loves trees, particularly the oak trees on her property in California. So heeding his suggestion, she went out onto her property and made a point not to name anything around her, but to simply be with what was around her, and that, indeed, she felt an internal shift, an energizing she had never experienced before. Honestly, as a Pisces I think I’m already less inclined to name plants I’m communing with. But I can see how naming begins the process of separation. (And you can extrapolate ad infinitum on this one.) Just something to think about next time you are out in your gardens. A little experiment. Please let me know if anything interesting shows up for you…

Born with the moon in Cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
Call her green for the children who have made her
Little green, be a gypsy dancer

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow

—Joni Mitchell

(Did you click on Joni??? :))

‘Till soon…
Blessings,
Kathryn

Posted on March 8th, 2008 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants