Who’s Tired of Snow?

Who isn’t gazing out the window and thinking of the next season to come – Spring.  Don’t get me wrong, snow, especially in our rural area, is beautiful.  The drawback is that coldness comes with it, and cold isn’t so great for old bones such as mine.

So, let’s dwell for a moment on another season.  I was given a writing assignment for a class, in which I was supposed to describe which flower best fit me.  Sometimes the flowers choose us.  And, different flowers come into our lives at different times for different reasons.

When thinking about this assignment I asked my husband what flower I remind him of.  He thought for a while as we sat across the table from each other and said “iris.”  This was not what I expected at all.  However, there are bunches of irises that grow around our house.  There is a bunch right off our front porches that have been there for years.  I especially noticed and paid attention to them during my single years when I was going through so much change.  I would sit in the swing and just gaze at these irises, purple in color.  I was just happy I had something so pretty to look at.   They were a magnet to my eyes.  I always found irises pictured in calendars for the month of August, my birth month.  Also, one of my favorite artist’s Van Gogh painted Irises.

After he told me this I looked up the meaning of the iris and found they symbolized a bridge between heaven and earth.  I would like to think that is true of me.  At least you could say that is my spiritual goal.  My favorite color had always been red before, but during this time I was also coming into the color purple.  Purple represents spirituality, and I was exploring this on a much deeper level, as I continue to do now ten years later.  To my mother’s dismay during my teenage years I used the colors red and purple in my bedroom.

Even though my husband regarded me as an iris, there are other flowers/herbs that I’ve been drawn to.  The poppy is one.  As coincidences have it just as I was thinking about poppies we went to our local organic farmer, and he had the most beautiful section of red poppies growing.  I love the field of poppies in “The Wizard of Oz,” and I love poppy seeds.  The flower symbolism associated with poppies is beauty, magic, consolation, fertility and eternal life.

I think if I could have a field of any type of flower it would be lavender.  I’ve often sat in the same swing where I’ve gazed at the irises and imagined a whole field of lavender in the field just beyond it.  There are so many uses for lavender.  Mostly it has a calming effect.  I’m never without lavender oil.  I’m thankful for the lavender oil bath I just had.