I found a bouquet of gladioli stems this morning at Bachman’s. What beauties they are!
Glorious Gladioli
These wonderful flowers always remind me of my mom and dad. Every spring in our oh-so-practical vegetable garden on our farm, my dad would plant two long rows of gladioli, simply because he knew that my mother loved them.
And every summer come late July or early August our house would be filled with gladiolus flowers. Each fall dad would dig up the bulbs and store them in an unheated room in our basement.
Every few years mom would buy a few new bulbs with different colored flowers. Some of them thrived and survived and some lasted only a year or two.
I tell you this story because it taught me two important lessons in life — beauty matters and love is expressed in the things we do as much as in the words that we say.
The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves. No-one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul.
― Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Beauty and Love
Farm life was not an easy life and we had few luxuries. Our days followed the seasons and were often long and arduous. But despite the hard work, my mom always took time to tend her flower beds and to pick flowers to bring into the house.
My dad wasn’t one to make big romantic gestures but his actions spoke loudly in doing something so simple as planting flower bulbs in the garden that my mom loved.
We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness. Plato said: ‘Beauty was ours in all its brightness…Whole were we who celebrated that festival’ (Phaedrus).”
― Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
August is the month of both of my parents’ birthdays. And though they both died over a decade ago, I celebrate them today by remembering them with love and gratitude.
May you walk in beauty.
Note: All of the photos in today’s post taken with my new camera handheld, a few were taken with my new 40-150 mm zoom lens (80-300 mm equivalent).
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