Spring Flowers

During my morning constitutional today, I was particularly aware of the beautiful spring flowers along my path. I've never NOT liked flowers, but I guess I haven't ever spent a lot of time thinking about them. But this morning I did, a bit.

Few smells on this earth can contend with the clean, fresh aroma of a growing flower. Today I decided that my favorite spring flowers are daffodils and hyacinth. My all-time favorite flowers are lilacs. It is sad indeed that they bloom for such a short time.

I'm not even sure carnations should be allowed to be called flowers. They smell bad and they're ugly. What is a flower, if it's not pretty and it doesn't smell good? I mean, seriously. It's like "white chocolate". Give me a break.

Flowers seem to hold lots of deep truths. One lies in way that the very act of picking a flower kills it. And speaking of killing flowers, I was reminded this morning of the time when I was about eight and visiting Grandma Nell. Grandma is my mom's mom, and she is a true nature lover, since before that sort of thing was politically correct. I was old enough to know that Grandma loved flowers, so when I saw one in her yard (probably in a flower bed, actually) I was excited to pick it and present it to her. As you might imagine, I learned that day that picking = death for flowers.

Yesterday at Curves a woman who was working out next to me mentioned that she knew spring has finally arrived, because that morning she had gotten her first dandelion bouquet of the season. She's a kindergarten teacher.

Here's wishing you a spring full of fresh dandelion bouquets.