It’s never too cold for flowers

I know I posted a few days ago, gushing more than a little about all this frozen white stuff outside.

I haven’t changed my mind about snow. I still think it’s delightful. And currently, my neighborhood has been getting at least a dusting of snow every day for the past week, so I am getting my fill. It really is nice. Trust me.

Nah. I know I’m not going to convince you. It’s cold right now. Really cold. Below zero Fahrenheit tonight cold. But hey, it’s winter. With the snow comes the cold. We deal.

But it’s also a time of the year when something decidedly non-frozen is purchased and given as gifts, or merely tokens of affection because of the holiday, Valentine’s Day. Yes, I’m talking about flowers.

Who doesn’t love flowers? Who doesn’t find them delightful?

Have you really stopped to look at a flower? Roses, tulips, daisies…all look lovely in a vase. Or just naturally growing wherever they do in nature. Plumeria blossoms in Hawaii. Bougainvilea vines all over the southwest. Cherry blossom trees in Japan. Even springtime fields full of wild dandelions. Vibrant, full of life. They adorn altars. They instantly beautify a table or a lapel, or a wrist. Their fragrant petals are showered on those we love or crushed into perfume. They are magic.

My mom loves flowers. Always has. She fastidiously planted daffodil and tulip bulbs every autumn around our house. Come springtime, we all would be rewarded with her efforts in an explosion of pastel pinks, reds and yellows. She’d go to the local nursery and buy trays of petunias, marigolds and snapdragons and fill our flower beds with their color. She would prune her rose bushes with surgical precision. She just adored the way they look. I inherited that appreciation of flowers from her.

Long, long ago, when our world was so much different and I was a pretty confident kindergartener, I distinctly remember walking home by myself the 4 blocks between my school and our house on a warm, sunny spring day. I recall strolling through a lush open field of grass and so many little yellow flowers–dandelions. Not really knowing what they were, or how most adults would consider them what they rightly are–weeds–I decided that they looked pretty enough for me to pick a bunch of, and walk back home and present them, with great pride and flourish, to my mom.

She smiled and thanked me, calling them “Beautiful!” then carefully placing them in a tiny glass of water as a vase. They didn’t last the afternoon without wilting, but back then I didn’t know that. They just looked sunny and happy and pretty to me.

And they still do. And my mom still sends my dad (or me) out to the local Costco for a bouquet of flowers which she carefully divides into smaller vases and places them all over their home. Even in the cold dead of winter. Or more accurately, because of the cold dead of winter. I agree with her. They do look delightful.