Blossoms Galore

March 21, 2011 (Vernal Equinox – First Day of Spring)

I love blossoms.  Flowers of all sorts thrill and amaze me, but blossoms, especially spring’s first ones, almost defy words to do them justice.

Blossom Vanguard

Blossoms fascinate.  I will never forget when, at 10 or 11, I saw a daffodil that had pushed its way through newly laid asphalt, steam-rolled hard and flat.  I couldn’t believe it.  For many years I kept a small hunk of the pavement the flower had pushed aside, possibly as a token of life’s ultimate victory.  I now see every spring-blooming bulb repeating this unlikely feat of light-touched strength.  Every crocus, daffodil, hyacinth and tulip performs the same mighty work: a flower emerging from a cold, bare, hard place.

Then the trees.  Platoons of crabapples, plums, cherries and dozens more whose names I don’t know, are already on the move around here.  I’m ready to surrender to these armies that encircle, the legions of blossoms on trees that win me by their sheer, sumptuous mass.  Rank on rank, row by row, spring tree’s blossoms conquer, take captive, and enslave all for one purpose: to adore them.

Finally, fruit.  Not much from first flowers but soon, each blossoming plant will bear a promise to bear a fruit.  After all these years a gardener, I can still scarcely take it in.  How does a tiny seed become a plant, ultimately with a blossom that becomes a fruit, itself filled with seeds to plant and start the cycle over again.

...from the most unlikely places