Heroes Not Zombies

Day Four of the Twelve project – 12 images, 12 months, 12 posts over 12 days.

In April the garden filled with colour as the bulbs we planted months ago shot up and expressed themselves with fabulous flowers. There’s an old saying about “March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers”, but Nature is never as predictable as that. Nature doesn’t use protocols or obey a limited set of strict rules. But there’s still something in that old phrase, not least a call to remember that wind and rain are necessary factors in the seasonal cycles of plants.

I start every day by stepping outside into the garden. I open all the wooden shutters to let the light in through the windows and I turn my gaze to the garden, the field, the vineyards and the sky. Colour catches my eye. A splash of white, red, yellow or blue. I’m drawn towards it. So on this April morning I was drawn to this particular flower and as I bent forwards to look more closely it took my breath away.

The water droplets beaded along the edges of the pink-fringed petals caught the morning sun and sparkled like precious jewels. The shadows of one petal inside another gave me the impression that light was actually emerging from within the flower itself. The delicate pattern of the pink on the white petals looked as if the flower had been lightly dipped into red paint, some of it running slightly from the edge down into the rest of the white petals.

It looked brand new. Freshly made.

Here in this one flower I could see the emergence of the alchemy of Nature working with the four elements – creating its green stalks and white petals from the earth, drawing the energy of the fire of the sun to grow and unfold itself, gathering the elements from the air to forge them into substance, and all with the life-giving power of water.

And maybe more than anything else, it is utterly beautiful. A true work of art.

How lucky are we to be surrounded by such magic and beauty.

“L’émerveillement du quotidien” – the wonder of the everyday.