When trees blossom, does love also blossom?

Here in the southern hemisphere, September is the time of spring blossoms. Not unlike the blossoming almond tree the poet Rilke writes about, the wisteria in my garden today is pungent with childhood memories of Michigan in March.

How to Bloom

The almond trees in bloom: all we can accomplish here is to ever know ourselves in our earthly appearance.

I endlessly marvel at you, blissful ones— at your demeanour,
the way you bear your vanishing adornment with timeless purpose,
Ah, to understand how to bloom: then would the heart be carried
beyond all milder dangers, to be consoled in the great one.

Rilke

Also today, in the newly established Middle Garden (more in a future blog) a pushing forth of spring blossoms from two crab apple trees just planted. Yet another reminder of childhood in Michigan where “a softness, as if from everywhere, is touching the earth”.

Threshold of Spring

Harshness gone. All at once caring spreads over
the naked gray of the meadows.
Tiny rivulets sing in different voices.
A softness, as if from everywhere,

is touching the earth.
Paths appear across the land and beckon.
Surprised once again you sense
its coming in the empty tree.

Rilke

At this time of year, who cannot but feel the power within spring blossoms to open one’s heart to life? Perhaps even, to summon up a budding courage to ask for a formal sharing of love?

In the above photo, behind the wisteria is the Peace Bus where Ben and Marisa spent the weekend. What fragrance flowed imperceptibly into the bus as they lay sleeping? Who knows, but in the morning, in the topsy turvy world of Windgrove, Marisa asked Ben to marry her. Lucky them.

Good luck for me, too, as their newly committed love pushed forth more than spring blossoms. Actually, two wheelbarrows full of firewood and lots of kindling to make sure that even I could experience the new found fire in their hearts.