Hope in a Vase: Beauty in Unexpected Places

               A May 9^th ice storm devastated our hydrangea bushes and stunted our peonies: a local metaphor for the destruction wreaked by COVID-19.  Cut flowers from the garden make our kitchen table an altar—a focus for eyes too used to screens—phones, laptops, tablets, television, even digital refrigerator. Flowers in a vase are company with my morning tea—beauty, comfort, promise.  It had been eight weeks since I braved a visit to the floral department at Acme.

             I was not about to subject myself to the risk and struggle—mask, gloves, vigilance—who touched the plastic sleeve on the bouquet, was I far enough from the man who sneezed by the pickles, did I catch it? —for flowers.  Or to have a delivery—cost, who touched the box, whatever.

So, since March, I learned to have what I have.  For the first time, I brought in forsythia fronds that provided indoor sunshine for a month.  Then a dogwood branch.  Fragrant daffodils and fuchsia bee balm make me sneeze, so they didn’t have vase time. But white rhodie blossoms did, and wild daisies from the lane. 

The zinnia I grew from seedlings were just starting to grow supportive stems, and the dahlias would have to wait.  And I panicked.  As most of us have and do, I have squelched my fears, worn the mask of “I’m okay,” affirmation-ed myself into what I believed to be equanimity.  But the morning I tossed the last of four peonies, and swept their tiny seeds off the table, I panicked.  No flowers.  And it wasn’t about not having flowers, but the panic I had too long successfully denied.  And self-pity—such a little thing to want, flowers in the vase. 

Carnations, daisies, roses—all these are lovelies, as is a comfortable life.  And my garden will yield dish-sized dahlias and the zinnias that are the flamenco dancers of the garden.  I snapped out of my self-pity and panic, as I dismantled towers of spent snap peas in the garden. Their lush, edible leaves were yellowed, their pods dried up—but for a few brave vines. I thought my favorite bouquet of this season would be the last of the peas—that represents nourishment, equanimity, seeds for the future, and the holding on that tendrils are. But then I discovered galinsoga weed that had sheltered under the peas~Beauty in unexpected places. I harvested them for our table.  Now I watch their tiny, perfect, complex blossoms turn to the sun. And get teary when I see their heart-shaped leaves spread like arms; and when I learn that they are safe and edible, and that their common name is “gallant soldier.”