p.s. for me this was self-transcendence because I used some editing techniques that were new to me such as cutaway…

Here is a photo of this year’s crocuses:

Crocus blooming around my house is a fairly new addition even though I’ve lived here in East Providence, RI for ten years. Squirrels had typically eaten crocus bulbs I planted until I tried waiting until December to plant them. Now they are the first flowers to bloom at my house in the barely arriving season of Spring.

The crocus is part of the iris plant family and is most noted for the variety of crocus that is used to produce saffron – used for its dye, medicinal purposes and for its use in cooking.

Emily Dickinson called the crocus “Spring’s first conviction.” Here is an Emily Dickinson poem about Spring that is the perfect usher for today’s Vernal Equinox.

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, poem no. 844

Read about Crocus Lore at The Butterfly Barn Nature Center Website in Pennsylvania.
Read my post about success with the squirrels not eating the bulbs.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience,
everything that sets
us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help.
Gardening is an instrument of grace.
- May Sarton

Shortly after I bought my first home, flush with newness and enthusiasm, I planted an abundance of flower bulbs – tulip, crocus, daffodils. I added bone meal to deter squirrels from eating the bulbs and waited for the wonder of spring color the following year. To my dismay, the only flowers that bloomed from that massive planting were the daffodils. This novice gardener asked around and learned that the squirrels don’t like daffodil bulbs but that they surely ate the tulips and crocus. I was pretty dejected and my future gardening projects mostly were annuals or perennials added as an already existing plant rather than a bulb.

For at least the next seven years, I never tried to plant additional bulbs. Last Fall, I decided to research if there might not be some little-known remedy to deter squirrels from eating flower bulbs and again nearly gave up when most of what I read on the Internet declared it a truly lost cause.

With a tenacity to somehow persevere and make it happen, I finally found a site that said if you wait and plant the flower bulbs in December just before the ground freezes that the squirrels have finished their major foraging period and are not actively seeking out food.

Mother Nature and my own gardening laziness conspired together in this regard. Decembers have been relatively mild in New England the last couple of years and I’m so busy that I do not automatically think to complete gardening chores in a timely fashion. So in mid-December, I easily dug up dirt and planted tulip and crocus bulbs.

Eureka! It worked. This spring I have tulips and crocus pretty much everywhere I planted them. I am giddy with tulip mania – maybe some of it rubbed off on me when I went to Turkey last year. Tulips are the national flower of Turkey and they were revered there long before they came to Holland.

Or maybe I am harkening back to growing up in Michigan with its own renowned tulip festivals in Holland, Michigan.

Regardless of the influence, I am so delighted that I did not give up in my quest to have tulips and crocus bloom in my yard. I am camera happy to take their portraits. This post is scattered with the results of said shutterbugging.

So if you are trying to keep squirrels from ravaging your flower bulbs, take my success story to heart. Plant them late, never give up and you too will find the perseverance of tulips is possible.

Quotes from Sri Chinmoy on this theme:

Inside each one of us is a beautiful flower garden.
This is the garden of the soul. With each lesson
we learn, the garden grows. As we learn together,
our individual gardens form a tranquil paradise.
- Sri Chinmoy

God’s favourite season is spring, when new hope, new life and new creation dawn. What God always wants from Himself is transcendence. This He can do only when He exercises new hope, new life and new creation constantly.
- Sri Chinmoy

The bridge over the Padanaram Harbor in Dartmouth, Massachusetts was closed and the bridgekeeper was motioning cars to go around rather than wait. I was on a dinner break from work and in the spirit of seizing the moment decided to visit the Daffodil Reserve owned by the town’s Department of Natural Resources Trust. I was bound and determined to still take this field trip and get back to work in one hour flat. So I dashed off down the road through the scenic and quaint environs of New England coastal charm.

Flowering trees serenaded my eyes. Tulips and daffodils were blooming in yards. Leaves were almost budding on trees. I was treated to Spring in all its glory as I drove to Parson’s Reserve on the edge of the Russells Mills national historic district in Dartmouth. I lost some precious time not taking the bridge over the harbor but still managed to make a short pilgrimage to the daffodil field at the top of a hill and at the end of a path through the woods.

Last year I visited the daffodils for the first time and was sorely lamenting that this year’s blooming coincided with me being sick and not up to making field trips through the woods. I knew that the daffodils would be finished soon and as quickly as my health permitted, I made a beeline to this vista.

A field of flowers as far as the eye can see is a heady bouquet for the heart to savor. Even a short visit enchanted me and I marvel at the enduring quality of cheerfulness and sunshine embodied in this flower family.

William Wordsworth wrote a famous poem about daffodils in 1804. It expresses perfectly the sentiment found in feasting upon Dartmouth’s daffodil field in full blossom.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
-William Wordsworth

Somewhat prone to worry in spite of my best intentions, one night I fitfully fell asleep only to then dream of powerful soothing guidance as I was surrounded by flowers – especially white hydrangea- which I later learned could be found in abundance lately at the Sri Chinmoy Centre meditation grounds I frequent in New York.

The big surprise in this dream, however, was that I heard I should drink lavender tea to calm my nerves. I woke up slightly puzzled. I certainly had heard of lavender’s properties for reducing stress and anxiety, but I had never heard of drinking lavender flowers. Was there really such a thing as lavender tea? Quick Internet research showed me it certainly is also drunk as tea. Gail Kavanagh explains that “Drunk as a tea, lavender is a natural treatment for anxiety and headaches” in her article The Healing Powers of Lavender at DoItYourself.com. Lavender contains many healing properties and was widely used in the Middle Ages for medicinal purposes. Lavender has antiseptic properties, aids in healing of scar tissue, soothes bites and burns, repels insects (used to ward off the plague in the 1600′s), aids sleep and is anti-depressive.

Excited to take this prescription for calm that I received in a dream to heart, now I just had to find lavender tea. I succeeded in buying two teas that included lavender in them at a local supermarket that includes a large natural foods and specialty item selection.

One organic spearmint lavender tea that lived up to its name “Charm” from Treleela contained a very clever tea bag that opens up and rests on the cup in such a manner that it is as if the tea is infused as loose leaves instead of in a traditional tea bag. The company is based in Chicago but the tea is grown in the Himalayas in India. Here is a picture of the tea bag inside a Jharna-Kala mug inspired by Sri Chinmoy’s artwork.

I am indeed a newfound fan of lavender tea and everything lavender scented. When the lavender growing in my yard blooms this summer, I will view it with a renewed sense of appreciation and respect. Lavender’s healing properties have been used for centuries and I salute the power of this tiny flower. And I am humbly grateful that the powers of spirit intervened in my life in such a detailed and loving way – like a kindly Grandmother – telling me to drink a hot cup of herbal tea to infuse my life with greater happiness.