I feel the
Earth is hurtling through the seasons much too fast. Wasn’t it just a week ago
that the Western Dogwood revealed its white arraignment, the Camellia and Italian Plum
bloomed riotously and the Lilac buds first showed their color? Today, the
dogwood’s bracts are browning and shriveling. The Camellia’s glory fell to a
slimy, suffocating mess on the perennial bed below. And the Lilac is fully
open, moments from its descent. Of all the flowering shrubs, I find the lilac’s
decline the saddest. Perhaps because its fragrance brings me such joy, I feel
its passing with greatest poignancy.
Among
people, our oldest friends often remain our closest and dearest regardless of
how many years pass. Perhaps so, too, with garden “friends”. Lilacs grew
outside the window next to the kitchen table of my childhood home. Their
fragrance arrived just as the days became warm enough to open the windows at
lunch time, and drifted in to sweeten our meals and our lives.
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