Friday Ramble - Seeing Red

Beyond the window is an ocean of deep, pillowy white that goes on forever and ever. Weary of ice and snow, she longs to have her morning tea on the veranda, but she knows that she will not be doing that for months. Given the snowfall this winter, we may not see the garden until the end of April. A little bright color right about now would be grand, and it would vastly appreciated too.

While pottering about in a local organic market, a tin bucket of tulips catches her eye, and she scoops up a large bunch in assorted colors, carrying them home in her arthritic paws as tenderly as if they were fledgling birds.  The pinks, purples and yellows are fine stuff, but the scarlets are nothing short of amazing - they are attention grabbers of the first order.

Arrayed in an old glass vase (a flea market find from last summer), the glossy blooms and bright green leaves don't just light up the day - they light up just about everything else too. A single bloom would be enough, but a whole bouquet is almost indecently sumptuous.

She resolves to keep a cauldron, a pot, a tin, a bucket, a tankard or a vase of something flowering near the southern window. She thinks about how beautiful a single rose will look there come summer, and it seems to her that this is not just about a vase of tulips or a single rose, but about all the boundless gardens of the earth coming into riotous intoxicating bloom.