From flower to flower.

From flower to flower

Upon arriving at this spot, the grassy lawn our motel sits on, I was handed an already made garden. For the next few years, mostly out of my complete lack of knowledge of the area’s botanical background, I tended to the garden with careful respect, leery of making any changes and happy to assure that everything will survive, passing any credit given to me to the prior owners.

As I got to know the different plants that populated the garden we established a closer relationship, I began to refer to each one of them by its first name, and I want to believe that they now do the same.  With time, each plant assumed its unique personality, some emerged as extremely likable and others not so much.

Even though I do not promote favoritism, I must admit that a. Flowers are my favorites and b. I find some flowers to be pretentious and time-consuming beyond what they rightfully deserve.

The Paeonia lactiflora the herbaceous Peony, or in short peonies, are but one such example. I inherited three of them; in white, pink, and blazing red. Their huge flowers, so big they can hardly be carried without bending the branches to the ground, always seem to me to be a work of an over- achieving botanical enthusiast. With dramatic pauses they take their time, the buds swell day after day and carry a promise of a spectacular bloom. Enticing herds of small ants, they strengthen a mysterious notion that the ants are needed for the pollination and for the flowers to open. And then one morning here they are. So big and so over the top that one is forced to stop and admire them and a week later they are gone. In their defense, they do not ask for much, except for being able to show off their gigantic flowery heads. They will return the following year emerging like the phoenix from the frozen ground and the few remaining dry twigs of last year’s summer. And a nice mythological tale accompanies this flower. It is about Paeon, a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. Asclepius became jealous of his pupil; so Zeus intervened and saved Paeon from the wrath of Asclepius by turning him into the peony flower. Nice story to go along with this presumptuous flower.

Now on the other end of the scale are the pansies. Small and unassuming, so ordinary you almost pass them by and miss a wonderful flower with even a better story.  The name "pansy" is derived from the French word pensée, "thought", and was imported into Late Middle English as a name of Viola in the mid-15th century, when flower was regarded as a symbol of remembrance.  Being bi-lingual I search the peculiar Hebrew name of the flower “Amnon and Tamar,” a quite unusual name. Two Biblical figures tied together by an act not of love, as we would expect but violence, rape. Amnon according to the biblical story raped his half-sister Tamar and was murdered by her brother Absalom. Absalom who was King David's favorite son later rebelled against the king was killed hanging from a tree by his hair. What a convoluted story of love and hate. And all this drama represented by a small, modest flower. Hardy, unfazed by the elements, demands so little and always adds a splash of vibrant color. When everything around is still gray and the ground barely awaken from the deep winter freeze, it is the pansy that I first plant in pots to be put on the motel decks, and announce the beginning of yet another season.

* Flowers details and names origin is taken from Wikipedia.