It’s that blooming time of year, when flowers spring up, like old friends, to remind us of the brighter things in life
Spring is not a time of new beginnings for me, but old ones. Doing things I’ve almost forgotten, all over again. I shrug off the tired seasonal injunction to change my ways and mend my bad habits. I’ve got hardly any bad habits left in any case. Does blowing your nose on the floor count? Just kidding.
I pick flowers. Ah sweet, you might think, flowers. We all like flowers. What’s wrong with that? Why does this sound like a mild confession made over the counter of the Sea Point police station?
Flowers change my world. I regard them in my collection of cheap vases all around me, in their prolific variety, and I am stunned afresh, again and again. They make my troubles slip away.
They remind me that in my own DNA, in my own life experience, I have everything I need to blossom. All it takes is patience, a little nurturing and self-love, and I will surely bloom. The change will come, as sure as the flowers appear in Spring.
Before you think me a plunderer, be assured that I know that picking flowers from anywhere inside the hallowed Table Mountain reserve is illegal, and something I obey with devotion. Nature is sacrosanct. It should not be fiddled with.
My wild posies come from overlooked grass verges, sidewalks, secret unmown urban fields, an old hotel which displays the odd forsaken agapanthus that needs rehabilitation. I see flowers in spring because I look for them.
As they bloom like old friends returning, I’m pulled to my flower-picking haunts all over town. My old beginnings stir once more. This is my season, my time to deck my flat with a cheersome spray of flowers every few days.
I marvel at the Cape flora. Tiny bulbs that have lain dormant all year send up a thin reed looking like a blade of grass. Within a few weeks, an explosion of vivid petals drips off the stem.
They grow in the most pedestrian of places, overlooked, invisible, because who would look for a flower in the yard of a derelict schoolyard, or a burnt out ruin? Even the old zoo by UCT has a few treasures, chincherinchees by the bucketload that blossom each year and disappear, mostly unseen.
Walking on the mountain has taught me that there’s always something in bloom. And that has made me keep my eyes attuned. Flowers are persistent. As am I. Nature is strong, as am I – for now. Perhaps that’s why there is this drawing closer in the most majestic of the seasons, a time to celebrate the fact that I’m still here, after the darkness of my personal winters. Life has its ups and downs. This vase here on my table is one of the ups. I may as well feel good while I can, not so?
I confess, I do keep a pair of secateurs in my cubbyhole, out of sight, like an illicit weapon. Similarly, I keep a saw in my boot during autumn to assist me in adjusting large fallen branches to fit inside my car so that I can use them in the fire. My wood is free-range.
I have, I confess, ridden my bike around the neighbourhood many times to prune overexcited iceberg roses and their fence-hopping ilk. I will never pick so that anyone notices, and only if the bush can afford to let a few flowers go. I believe it does them a service, this touch, this loving prune.
Driving up to Milnerton Fleamarket early on a Saturday morning, I notice that the daisies next to the road are facing the right way, diligently attendant to the guiding sun. They make me smile. Heaven knows, I need to smile. And spring is full of smiles for me.
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