I was nearly swooning when I brought my first bouquet indoors from the above camellia tree. My home is graced by not one, but two, of the above variety which are currently in full bloom, each standing at least ten feet tall! Half the front of the house is covered with these delicious blush blossoms, that fall somewhere between pale peach and pink. It is a splendor, my dears. Exquisite is the closest word. Yet even I was somewhat puzzled by the enormous impact these particular flowers had upon me once I had put three or four burgeoning blossoms in a lovely vase and placed them next to the bathroom sink. Was it the color? Was it that winter had had its effect and my soul just longed for spring, was filled up with the sheer delight of a freshly cut bouquet? Or what? Maybe a bit of both, I surmised. And then I picked up the book Oprah has chosen for her new free international workshop (which begins online Monday evening, btw), Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. And I was deeply moved to discover he opens the book with an “evocation” that begins with a treatise on flowers. He suggests that a single flower triggers in us a memory of our own most inner beauty, our true nature, a faint whisper, perhaps, of that which we have forgotten. Could it be?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home…

William Wordsworth

I believe so, my dear gardeners, I believe so.

The garden abounds with camellias at this time of year. Outside my bedroom window I’m treated to an equally tall pink one. Perhaps some of you who are more educated in camelias than I might actually identify some of these. They were planted many years ago by someone no longer gracing Earth’s stage. I am simply the next to enjoy. And so I share with you:

I found this whimsical creature dangling over the fence that separates my yard from my dear next door neighbor’s:

“The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition…Flowers…would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.”–Eckhart Tolle

I shall be eternally grateful for the beauty flowers bring to our lives. This month it is the camellias. Soon it will be the rhododendrums, the trusty hollyhock, and graceful cosmos and a world of infinite possibilities, forms, beauties. How lucky we are to notice, to tend, to provide, to teach, to enjoy, to appreciate, to be.

Love and blessings,
Kathryn xoxox

Posted on March 1st, 2008 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants