BLOGG # BEDS OF CROCUSES

Last year at this time I wrote about the time when I was walking my favourite walk to find spring flowers especially the crocuses on the mossy bank by the kindergarten adjacent to St.Mary's church. To my horror the school was gone, the mossy bank was gone and in it's place were huge construction machines taking massive bites out of the yard. The crocuses where gone except for one lone one. I mourned the loss of this lovely bed of crocuses.  A year has passed.  Yesterday I did the same walk. To my surprise I saw a mass of crocuses spreading over the construction site. They were scattered from the crumbled mossy wall to the new houses springing up.

  I had to paint them-these shimmering blossoms shivering in the cold wind- bravely defiantly spreading themselves over the whole area. What moxy!  Previously they just were confined to the mossy bank but not any more. Now they are luxuriantly stretching their wings-or rather roots covering the lot.
What a lesson for me I thought as I sketched. What a confirmation of positive survival in the face of catastrophe! What resilience and adaptability to an adverse action. These little insignificant blooms can be our teacher. They did not throw up their heels and die as expected. No- they survived and multiplied. What a smack in our eye.
Then I thought about myself in this past year. It too was difficult and changes were necessary and I sometimes felt despair. Also others I know felt the same in their individual lives but more importantly in the affairs of the troubled world also. This had been a difficult year.
We all feel despair at the upheaval of the planet. The uprooting of peoples from their homes and now homeless. The thoughtlessness of ongoing chaos. Will it ever stop- will we survive as good human beings?  Everyone everywhere has these thoughts now and it is easy to lose hope but I decided to take the crocus as example. I  have a  choice after all and instead of despairing I will look to the lowly crocus which always gave me joy especially in the drab spring of the prairies when I was a little girl and thought that spring would never come.
I decided I would use these crocuses which all my life have been the harbingers of joy and light to remind me that life is a privilege not just a right and I must not despair but like them fight to survive and grow in spite of misfortunes happening around us and be harbingers of light and joy too.
Yes this is a tall order but necessary if we want to survive as a species. Remember despair is an assault on the human spirit. Do not give it power.