A week or two ago I noticed a field,
a field full of wild sweetpeas.
An unkempt paddock that nobody gives a second glance to as they pass by; merrily festooned in magical pink. Bees & bumble bees gleefully going about their flighty business by the thousands & thousands, swooning from flower to flower,
to flower...
One day just before Christmas I spotted a little retro green typewriter. I adored it & bought it & had it sent up from Wellington. I thought that I would simply sell the very ancient Underwood & all would be well. I used old Greenie to type out the meaning of the flowers that I put in Sarah's bouquet for the wedding in early January..
I have a little story to tell you about tulips. I read it in my "The Enchanted Garden" book, by Claire O'Rush that Sarah & Matt gave me last year. The story is in the chapter called "Flower Healing"...& you know, they really do...heal, that is.
..."Folklore tells of a meadow in England that was inhabited by fairies (meaning that they kept their underground courts beneath it & used it's surface for the revels in the moonlight). In a nearby cottage lived an old woman who tended a very pretty garden, wherein grew a bed of especially lovely tulips. The fairies delighted in this spot, & they would carry their infants thither, singing them to sleep with sweet lullabies. Sometimes, musical airs of such mellifluence were heard in the vicinity of the tulip bed that it seemed as if the flowers were making music of themselves. At dawn the fairies returned from the meadow where they had been making merry, & could be heard caressing & murmuring to their infants as they carried them back to their fairy fort.
The tulips remained in bloom all summer through because of the fairy enchantment & were as fragrant as roses. This so enraptured the old woman that she would never suffer a single flower to be plucked from it's stem.
In time she died; & her successor uprooted the enchanted flowers & planted a parsley bed in their place. the fairies were so distressed that they cast a blight over the whole garden, & for many years nothing at all would grow within it's confines except rank weeds. Yet the fairies tended the old woman's grave so that the grass which grew over it was ever bright green, & the loveliest flowers disported themselves wantonly among the blades, although no human hand ever planted or sowed or in any way ministered to the grave.
This story seems to suggest that where human insensitivity does not recognise the presence of love & the harmony & beauty that are it's gifts & it's manifestations, the life forces wither away, withdrawing to & remaining with the source of that love. A salutary lesson, perhaps, in our ecological troubled times."
And so a week or so later I took Rob back to see the field, but what should we find when we got there but decimation!!
I couldn't believe my eyes.
All gone!
So we gathered seeds instead & pondered on the unsettling lesson, that life is in constant flow; whether we like it or not.
Peach coloured roses are all about sincerity.
Sincerely, Evelyn.
These zinnias are in your honour dear friends as they symbolise: lasting affection & thinking of an absent friend.
Yellow roses, like Golden Celebration speak of friendship.
Thank you too for visiting.
It's so lovely to see you.
But do tell me, I'd like to know...did you know what mellifluence meant all by yourself & just off the top of your head?
We had to look it up!!
Mellifluence is a very old word meaning:
adjective 1.
(of sounds or utterances) smooth or honeyed; sweet
Much love Catherine x0x0x
Posts
