The other day, I bought some tulips at the grocery store. It was a gloomy day, threatening snow, and they just looked so appealing in their buckets that I gathered up two bouquets and brought them home.
As I was settling them in a vase, a bucket of indirect light poured through the window and glossed the petals. I peeked into the centers of the flowers, seeing the dark stars at the base of the flowers and the stamens, sturdy and sexy. I thought about going to get my camera to take some photos.
And then I remembered that I do it every year. Choose these very flowers—pale pink and orange edged with flame yellow. I put them in a vase and shoot them against the dark snowy days of April (which just doesn’t even sound right!). One of my nieces loved one set enough that she had prints made and hung them in her apartment. One of my own favorites is a tulip reflected in the silver faucet. And this morning, I shot this one. Well, actually I shot 46 photos, but this one was one of my favorites.
I also like this one, which looks like a bunch of girls whispering.
It’s a peaceful little ritual, shooting tulips on wintery spring days. It brings the promise of the coming season a little closer, where I can believe in it. It brings the light, it brings beauty.
Do you have rituals like this? Has spring arrived in your world yet? If not, what are you doing to keep believing it will come?
Thank you, it is a blizzard here NW of Longmont, CO.
Dear Barbara:
I am a fellow writer and seeker and blogger and read my very first book that you have written “The Garden of Happy Endings!” Oh how I devoured that book! How deeply the character of Elsa imprinted my soul. How kindred I felt with her, right down to the feelings, the inner knowing of things about to happen. The running in bewilderment, the damage from the church, the returning again and again to her spirit. How God never left her in her wanderings. How beautiful the lessons in the middle of tragic pain.
Thankyou…Having once lived and worked in Pueblo I loved revisiting. I knew you were a neighbor in Colorado and just searched until I found this….
I just wanted to say, you have a found another reader who cannot wait to read more of your work. Truthfully I have never read a Romance novel per say, but I will try one. Please know you have my deepest respect for your ability to bring such wonderful people as Elsa and Calvin and Deacon and Joaquin and Tamsin. Wonderful!! Thank you sooo much! Blessings and blessings some more!
Oh and I forgot to comment on the lovely tulip pictures and the rite of Spring.
Mine is I pull out colorful shirts and I have a special pair of tennis shoes (Keds actually) that are the colors of spring. I shrug off the cable knit sweaters and the boots and the coats and I run like a maniac into the first spring morning of joy! In Colorado (as you well know) spring is one day of glory and the next of waiting in bewilderment with the birds who are hiding amongst the lilac bushes covered in frost!
Lynn, I’m so delighted to hear from you! I visited your website and was touched by the work you are doing. Bravo!
I wonder if we were neighbors in Pueblo at any time!