Tender Sweet Freesia

Several years ago, i planted freesia bulbs in various large potted plants. Today i discovered a purple freesia blooming in the plumeria.

Freesia are so sweetly fragrant, i love their perfume. Yet, i really don't have the oomph to focus on this tender bulb, so i hid the freesia bulbs in houseplants so that they would surprise me. As they have been doing for years.

Our tender qualities of heart are sometimes hidden behind our rough exterior or the thin veneer of nice-ness we show to the world.

Let your kindness bloom today. What one thing can you do? What random act of kindness can you offer to your world? Without expecting anything in return. Without even expecting that people will like what you have done. Without even expecting that people will like you.

What's in the Front Row?

It's time to start making space in my solarium for the spring plants. I'm potting up the rooted cuttings of many of my houseplants. I need more space even though I've decided not to start seedlings (although it's not too late to change my mind).

So it's time to take the front row plants and give them seats either in the balcony or the pit orchestra (i.e., my sweetie's music studio in the basement). Then i can push other, younger, more tender plants into the sunny front row.

What are some of our front row re-actions? Impatience? Anxiety? Frustration? Worry? Planning? Yearning?

The Buddha spoke a very clear poem on just this subject:

The thought manifests as the word;

the word manifests as the deed;

the deed develops into habit;

and habit hardens into character.

So watch the thoughts and its ways with care,

and let it spring from love

born out of concern for all beings.

We take one of our bad habits and start working backwards, mindfully.
We mindfully suppress the deed, the action.
We mindfully suppress the words on the tips of our tongues. Oh, this is hard work.
We mindfully feel the thoughts and emotions in our body. Oh, this is painful.

After several workouts of our mindfulness muscles over the course of a month or two, we will be surprised by the occasional arising of patience and kindness, concern and compassion.
Born out of concern for all beings, ourselves first of all.

The Delight of Giving

My friend Trudy, aged 88, goes to the supermarket every Monday morning to pick up the flowers they are about to throw away as the fresh shipment arrives. She takes the flowers to the soup kitchen where she volunteers every Tuesday and Friday. Although she used to help make the salad or the main course, new volunteers have taken over those responsibilities. Now her "job" is to arrange the flowers into vases for each table.

Trudy is also a painter of flowers, so many of these cast-off flowers show up in her daily water colors. Sometimes she takes an arrangement of flowers to one of the 2 nearby nursing homes where she teaches painting once a week.

Generosity takes many forms. The supermarket is generous with its cast-off flowers. Trudy is generous with her time. Arranging flowers on the tables delights her.

What delights you about giving?

Photo by dreamstime.com

The Joy of Giving

I've gotten a whole month of blooms from those hyacinths in vases, but now they are nearly all gone. So i turn my attention to the 25 pots of hyacinths and tulips that have been living in my garage since November. One by one i'm bringing them indoors, and one pot has begun to sprout.

You could say i am a flower localvore. Instead of buying cut flowers at the grocery store, i'm growing my own. And i must say, these hyacinths and tulips are bringing me a lot of happiness. I even love to see them sprouting, before they have any flowers at all.

The Buddha tells us:

Giving brings happiness at every stage of its expression.

We experience joy in forming the intention to be generous,

we experience joy in the actual act of giving something,

and we experience joy in remembering the fact that we have given.

I have so enjoyed the intention--planting the bulbs and "hiding" them in the basement or garage. (Feels sort of like a Secret Santa.)

I also enjoy the intention of bringing them indoors and watching them sprout.

I definitely get a kick out of giving away the hyacinths and soon the tulips.

And i do love the thought of all those spent hyacinth bulbs being planted in the ground in dozens of friends' gardens about a month from now.

Joy, joy, joy.

I've got joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

Photos from colourbox.com and heartphone.net

Skunk!

A skunk waddled across the road as we were driving home last night. Spring! The smell of skunk is the first sure sign of spring. The unpleasant smell gives rise to a pleasant thought.

We often want to push away the unpleasant. No, thanks. I don't want any of that.

But, really, we can't hold on to anything. Neither the sighting of the first skunk nor its lingering odor. And not the thought of Spring! It's actually sort of useless to push away or grasp for, but that's what we spend our whole lives doing.

The skunk, the smell, the thought, the reading of this blog are gone. Gone. Gone.
Leaving us with only this present moment.

Broken

Flowers in vases don't transport very well. I took a hyacinth to my step-daughter in a vase that fit into the cup-holder in the car. (And it's no small feat to find a vase that has a bottle-sized bottom.) Nevertheless, by the time we had driven 2-1/2 hours, the flower stem had broken off the bulb. Sigh.

In the full bloom of life, the flower breaks. Things break. Things change. Things don't go as we wish they would. The body gets sick. Perhaps very sick.

The Dharma is teaching us something. Do we have the eyes to see? The ears to hear?

A Flower Friend Dies

My flower friend, Lou, died Wednesday night. Since i mostly see her in the summer at Perennial Swappers, i was surprised to learn 2 weeks ago that she had cancer. She had been on the downhill slide since October.

Lou often thanked me for the flowers in her flowerbeds--several of them came from my garden. Now, like those flowers, she has withered and died.

Dear sweet Lou.