Moments Of Flowering – 22/52, BlackBerry 52, Golden Valley, Minnesota, June 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Medium: original Droid snapshot of the last peony in our garden, June 2011. Polaroid effect and text added with Little Photo. Jump-Off from Lotus: Not Even Deep Into The Summer, a haiga collaboration with Robin from Life In The Bogs.
Dark clouds pile high over the hill, whipped cream on dirty snow. The sky smells like damp moss and rotting leaves. I squat in a swarm of rain-ready mosquitoes, and aim the camera toward the one surviving peony not browning at the edges. Though strong, she will falter under the weight of the next crack of thunder, pregnant with hard rain. Aching knees. I swat away a bead of sweat, listen to the pretend shutter click.
The pink peony lures me in, along with a lonely ant crawling toward the vortex of petals, sucked in like the prey of a Venus Flytrap. I think of a page from May Sarton’s journal—Journal of a Solitude, the entry from June 23rd. Summer in New Hampshire could be Summer in Minnesota. The humidity feels heavy. The world has gone mad. Too much happens these days. But the peony rises every year from buried piles of January snow, from the trampling of the mailman over her Winter stalks, from under the tire tracks of the neighbor’s SUV the night it drifted off the pitched driveway and on to the muddy grass.
It takes a whole year of work to bloom. I pay attention to the garden. My whole life comes alive there.
_____________________________
June 23rd
Almost too much happens these days. How can I be enough aware of all that opens and dies so quickly in the garden? It takes a whole year of work and waiting for this supreme moment of the great snow-white peonies—and then they are gone! I was thinking about it as I lay in bed this morning, and also of Mildred’s wise remark, “The roots of love need watering or it dies.” When she leaves, the house is at peace. Beauty and order have returned, and always she has left behind a drop of balm, such as that phrase; so her work here is a work of art. There is a mystical rite under the material act of cleaning and tidying, for what is done with love is always more than itself and partakes of the celestial orders.
It does not astonish or make us angry that it takes a whole year to bring into the house three great white peonies and two pale blue iris. It seems altogether right and appropriate that these glories are earned with long patience and faith (how many times this late spring I have feared the lilacs had been frost-killed, but in the end they were as glorious as ever before), and also that it is altogether right and appropriate that they cannot last. Yet in our human relations we are outraged when the supreme moments, the moments of flowering, must be waited for…and then cannot last. We reach a summit, and then have to go down again.
—May Sarton from Journal of a Solitude. First Published 1973, by W.W. Norton & Company.
-posted on red Ravine, Friday, June 17th, 2011
-related to posts: The Ant & The Peony, WRITING TOPIC — NAMES OF FLOWERS, Secrets of the Passion Flower, WRITING TOPIC — SPRING CLEANING — (HOMEMADE CLEANING REMEDIES)
Ahhh, beautiful. Waiting, paying attention, saying goodbye, then waiting for another year — the garden’s cycle.
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Bo, makes me feel peaceful. I think of you when I’m walking close to the flower’s face. All those beautiful close up’s you have captured! I’m just learning to work with this Droid, my new mobile device camera. It seems more difficult to take photos than with my BlackBerry. I think it’s because I have to hold a larger device, then touch the screen to take the photo—which actually moves the screen! Maybe I’ll get used to it. I miss the keyboard though. Time will tell. Too new to know. Only a week with this new camera phone. The apps are fun. Maybe next year, I’ll get a new SLR. I’m tucking the idea at the back of my wish list. Thanks for stopping by!
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Beautiful, QM.
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Robin, thank you. I’m glad you stopped by because it reminded me that I was going to add your name to the credit line in the photo on this post. I went back and linked to Life in the Bogs.
For those who click on the link to the haiga by Lotus (above under the peony photo), it is Robin’s photograph that is part of the collaboration between her and Lotus on BlackBerry 52 Week 22. So fun and enriching when people collaborate. Good for the art!
Robin, so sorry for the loss of your mother-in-law. A beautiful post and tribute to her at Life in the Bogs.
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“We reach a summit, and then have to go down again.”
This is a hard line of May’s to swallow. And I don’t want it to be true. Even though I’ve experience going under after the summit again and again, I crave something something neutral. Ordinary.
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These are lovely and healing words for me this morning, QM, particularly in light of the sad turn Gwendolyn’s cancer has taken. “We reach a summit, and then have to go down again.”
Sigh.
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Sinclair, it is a hard line to swallow. I think about it often. Impermanence. I’ve been feeling like I am in one of the valleys the last few weeks. I was thinking though, that I tend to do this each year after Art-A-Whirl. There is that big push to get the work done and up, then the wonderful interactions with the people. And after, there is the period heading into Summer where things slow down and I have time to think and reflect on my life. It’s an odd time. Yet, it’s almost a yearly ritual. I never have much energy in Summer, even though I was born in July.
Ordinary. I’m thinking about what it means to be ordinary, to live an ordinary life. What does it mean?
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Flannista, I have been thinking of Gwendolyn often the last few weeks. It’s hard to find a place for those thoughts and feelings. They don’t fit anywhere. I am sending warm energy to her and all those close to her and in her inner circle. It is sobering and sad. Best to you and all who are walking beside her.
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Beautiful picture and love the May Sarton quote.
The peonies have come and gone here as have the irises, the daffodils, and the forsythia. But, the cone flowers have bloomed, more will follow, and soon the native sunflowers will burst open in a show of bright yellow. The delicate pink blossoms of the queen of the prairie will appear. The yarrow stands tall and topped with tiny white flowers. Nature demonstrates how we can flower in any season and that’s it’s our nature as humans to bloom, die, bloom again, die again in a never ending cycle that not even death will end.
I take comfort in the thought that when I’m cremated, I may become the pink flowers on the Queen of the Prairie or the spiky flower on the rattlesnake master…still blooming and dying.
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Thank you, QM.
I really like what Lotus did with the photo. 🙂
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QuionMonkey,
I sent this May Sarton quote to a friend yesterday. She was feeling in the dumps and actually said she felt jealous of people in her life that were in the “blooming” phase. It’s lovely to be blooming and yet we know it cannot last, for ourselves, or anyone. As I grow older and have been through some very painful and difficult phases of life, I become more hopeful that I can value and appreciate the darker, more winter like ones. Our human nature directs us away from pain, boredom, and anything that feels like dying. It couldn’t be any other way and yet we still hope for it to be otherwise. Rebirth is momentary. I buy flowers every week to place in my office for my therapy practice. It is the one reminder to me and to some of my clients of this process. Thanks for the beautiful photo.
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ahh. I loved this. Thank you so much, Quoin. We had a late spring so our peonies are peaking just now. My neighbor who lives over the hill had to be out of town this month and knew she would miss the peonies blooming so she invited Chris and me to come over and cut whatever we liked. Her perennial garden is gorgeous, like something out of a gardening book. White and exquisite coral colored poppies (like a Georgia O’Keefe painting) Irises – slender Siberians as well as bigger ones that are the usual pale blue but also royal purple, rust red and pure white – never saw an a rusty red Iris before. Pink and white peonies. I took just a few. They opened overnight in wild exuberance all over my house and then in two days, dropped their petals all over the tables and floors. Still beautiful. But very soon, gone.
I just finished reading Joko Beck’s chapter in Meetings with Remarkable Women (a Natalie recommendation for December) and she talks a lot about being fully present to your own darkness, to your fears and losses, and to death – yours and others. A lifelong practice. A good reminder. When I am awake enough(and brave enough) to stop struggling against my own sorrow or pain and to enter into it instead, even for a few minutes, it offers some of the deepest lessons. I know this; I also know I will continue to turn away. I can go there more easily when my sadness, wistfulness, is about the brevity of a peony’s life. Not so easy when it’s about the brevity of the life of someone I love.
My heart goes out to Gwen and her partner.
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Bob, Teresa, & Jude, thank you so much for the poetry in your responses. I had to read each one several times. Any words I may say in response would fall short. I really appreciate reading your thoughts and feelings. Thanks for taking the time to share them.
Some last thoughts from May:
“If one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud something like revelation takes place. Something is ‘given’ and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self. We are aware of God only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the negative sense of denying self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy.” — May Sarton
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QM, Peonies are so beautiful, and one pays dearly for them in floral shops in cities where they do not grow in most gardens. (Like L.A.)
How remarkably Mother Nature works. Who tells the ants that it is time to come and help the peonies bloom? Who gives birds their beak shapes that accomodate the types of food they eat? Who designed trees in the shapes where the leaves all receive the sunshine they need? Scientists speak of “intelligent design,” I say “I agree, and the intelligent Designer is Divine Mind.”
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oliverowl, I love peonies. They sure don’t last long though. I love the smell and the shape of them. They always make me smile and signal the end of Spring, beginning of Summer for me. Funny you mention the birds and the shape of their beaks. I think about that all the time this year. We’ve got more feeders up right outside our living room window and I watch the birds constantly. We’ve got yellow finches, woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, purple finches, too many to name and some I can’t name. And the trees…there is a lot of dialogue going on about trees these days. Lots of women writing books about trees. It’s fascinating. Rooted and grounding.
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