Seet peas are my favourite flower. Probably because I have memories of them from my childhood. I remember my mother mentioning they were my grandfather’s favourite flower. As a young bride she took to gardening and he was most appreciative of her efforts. She would take special care to plant sweet peas in the season, making sure he could view them from his bedroom window too. The flower has a very delicate fragrance that I have as yet to come across bottled in a perfume. You have to really bend low and close to the flower to enjoy it.
Gone are the days of big bungalows with sprawling gardens of my childhood. Now the price we pay for living in urban jungles is apartments with balconies that satisfy the longing for openness or fresh air.
But, in the condominium complex where we live, they plant sweet peas every year. So when I see the little shoots in the soil sprout forth toward December end, I smile. And every morn, as I walk the boys to the school bus, I see them grown a few centimetres overnight and I smile. And then one morning when I see the Gardner has put in the bamboo support the flower will need to grow, for it is a “climbing plant”, I smile in anticipation of the first bud that will bloom.
Then suddenly one morning, there it is….purple and pink and white, delicate and fragrant. It feels that it is blooming first for me. It makes me smile.
It is such pure joy. It is a smile from God. It is a smile inside my heart. No matter how bleak my day seems ahead, or what list of “To Do’s” I have on my mind, I smile every time I come see the flower. In the brief moment of glancing at the flower, I invoke in my being the emotions of a loving childhood, memories of a doting grandfather, passion of my mother’s gardening, the fragrance of love and happiness. And it makes me smile.
There are many such moments that we all create in all our lives knowingly or unknowingly …the smell of a spice, the feel of a fabric, the melody of a certain song, the sunlight in a particular room, a favourite name, a book, a sudden fragrance in the air, the breeze of spring, - so many moments that create associations, build memories and bring a quiet smile on your face and in your heart every time.
I hope you find your sweet peas and always find reason to smile in life!
Happy 2018!
