To follow up on yesterday’s post, where I urged myself and everyone to stop and smell the roses in the midst of constant, more and more alarming “news” (really, “the olds,” on endless repeat repeat repeat), I run another post here, first detailing my own experience starting as a child with roses, and next, state that since the turn of the millennium, I’ve migrated from Rose to . . . Iris!
PLANT MAGICK_ Roses
Excerpt:
“And they were everywhere, mature rose bushes, entwining our slatted wood backyard fence like a chorus line of great fans, holding hands, one after another, pink, white, red and yellow blossoms seeking the sun, suspended in air, calling to me to come, come. To snuffle right up to those great, fragile, multi-petaled spirals in all stages of blooming. To feast my eyes on their breathless beauty, to bathe my lungs in their loving gentle joyful spirit.
“I loved them and felt blessed in their presence. I could forget nuclear war, could forget the war within my own psyche, could forget the squabbling among eight siblings in the red brick house facing the rose-trellised fenced yard. The red brick house where my mother labored day after endless day with chores, and of which the back door was forever slamming open and shut with the rush of young strong restless tanned legs in shorts of all sizes.
“I could release it all and sink into the fragrance of roses. Tittering on tip toe, expectant, I would seek, and then thrill to discover the perfect rose. The one rose that was not closed tight as a bud, nor was it opened fully to show the seeds, but — oh ecstasy! — was opening, spiraling out, its fluid ordered dynamics so clear, so glorious, so mysterious, that my heart would flutter in jubilation.”
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This morning, out in the front yard, I consulted with neighbor Carissa about why my irises are not producing flowers; most of them, that is. Here’s one that surprisingly, is coming up through already spent daffodils. Not quite in bloom, but already glorious in its unfolding.
A few of the smaller irises are blooming, like this one:
Carissa wonders if it has to do with the ph of the soil in that area; maybe too acidic? She tells me of someone she knows who sprinkled baking soda onto the soil underneath his plants, and they took off! Makes sense: true for me, too. I sometimes have to get up in the middle of the night to quell the acidity of my stomach, still working overtime to process the drama of the day before, by drinking a bit of baking soda diluted in water.
In order to impress on her how vital the Iris has become in my life, I take her inside the living room and show her the painting I created on return from a Dances of Universal Peace event on Good Friday, 2002. I came back to the motel in a heightened state, sat down, picked up watercolors, and moved into an ecstatic trance.
And while the painting is itself beautiful (despite the reflections on the photo I took of the painting on the wall this morning), its colors pale to nothingness next to real live irises, or roses, or any other real, living, organic being that sings to the sky, is blessed by the sun, and roots deeply within the living, conscious being we call Earth.
That I wonder why I am so drawn to iris (which are right now blooming all over town) and that they are not producing much (yet) this year in my own yard . . . look what Iris symbolizes!
Yes Ann, stay calm and positive. Bless the unfolding of the miracle that each of our short, precious plant — and human — lives offer to our dear Mother Earth.
And . . . get out the baking powder. At least for me, and maybe for the Iris, too.