Seasonal Bulbs and Their Lessons

Seasonal bulbs again teach life lessons worth repeating. Years ago, in November, I bought an amaryllis bulb that I assumed would bloom for Christmas. (Not reading directions enables such assumptions) I should have started at Halloween for Christmas color!

This year, I bought with an informed understanding that starting a bulb in early December would mean no color for six to eight weeks. (I am still waiting.)

A friend, however, gave me a bulb in early January hoping I’d have a bright red bloom for Valentine’s Day. It exploded two weeks early with three vivid red, lush blooms!

Life lessons: Indoor gardening can be as full of surprises as gardening in the great outdoors. Nature isn’t obliged to follow my timetable, in or out of doors. So, I can’t force anyone’s blooming, including my own.

Recovering from the most recent virus has been a slow slough. But hey, recovering is the operative word! So, I feel like the amaryllis looks on the left: health is budding, but not ready to bloom.

These past several weeks have been a continuing education class on attitude adjustments. Impatient, cross, and puny, I rise above my wretched self-pity though when I read articles on why so many elderly are dying for this year’s flu.

Scaring myself into civility seems to work. For a while.

Since I can’t think of anything to write worth reading, I’ll close with a quote that sums up today’s wisdom:

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy. ~Izaak Walton (1593-1683) The Compleat Angler [1653-1655], Chapter 21

Now I think I’ll paint . . . adapting my tulips from another artist’s impressions. Sometimes my hands work better than my words.

When words hide, PAINT

You shouldn’t say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe. ~James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) In “Whistler Stories,” by D. C. Seitz, 1913.