Floral Canvases And Our Hearts Are Gardens Of Awakening Blooms Elita Sohmer Clayman

My mom always said she wanted to work part time in a florist shop. She loved flowers so much and once when she was in the hospital for some minor surgery; she reminded me that I needed to go to her apartment and to make sure that her neighbor, aptly named Mrs. Rose was watering her green plants. I assured her that Mrs.Rose was doing that, I had just stopped by.

Cicero said “Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing.” Leo Buscaglia said “A single rose can be my garden, a single friend, my world.” Another saying by Jeff Cox said “The garden is a love song, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.”

All of the sayings apply to the feeling that people experience towards their garden. All of the grocery stores now sell bunches of loose flowers and for about ten dollars; you can bring a set home and fill your kitchen or dining room with fresh multi colored blooms.

I also love flowers. I remember about in 1987, my son was home for summer from college and he drove me to the gynecologist’s office and the doctor said that I needed some kind of in office procedure and I was feeling sad about the oncoming event. My son said “wait a minute, I’ll be right back. “he had something to do there in the shopping complex where the doctor’s office was located. He came back about ten minutes later and he had gone to a small floral shop there and bought me one long stemmed beautiful rose to cheer me up. He did not have a lot of his own money then and the thought and the gesture was ‘my garden’ as mentioned in the sayings above.

One rose made me feel confident and clear on what I had to do and a week later, everything turned out alright. I never forgot the single rose that lifted up my spirits. It is true that flowers can be a love song between a person and Nature. When my first child was born, my husband sent me a merry go round filled with flowers to my hospital room. It was so lovely and as the merry go round twirled, the flowers twirled too. I loved it so much. It was all pink with pink ribbons for a girl child being born.

When my brother passed on ten years ago, the funeral was in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania where his daughter lived. She had a marvelous front garden all shaped out and full of beautiful and different plants and flowers. When we came home, I told my husband, I wanted our front to look like hers. We hired a nursery and told the owner what we liked. It wound up being a very deep and dug out front where the plants were lined up and being so dug out and large, weeds inhabit daily. You hire someone to pick the weeds, because my husband can no longer do it and it seems before they leave, the weeds return. They show up more because the beds are so wide, but extremely beautiful. After we had the weeds pulled and mulch put down at a great expense a few weeks ago, my husband every other morning pulls a few new weeds out to keep it looking great. The pleasure of seeing something so pretty is almost worth the weed’s delight in their invading our premises. We have tried weeding control stuff and somehow they survive and return.

Lou Erickson said “gardening requires lots of water, most of it in the form of perspiration.” That is true, but my husband and many others gain joy from working with their hands in their own garden of flowers. It is said that a garden is a thing of beauty and a forever job. True, but to most gardeners, they enjoy this task and I have heard them say it gives them peace and happiness to tinker in the dirt. I myself use to plant trays of petunias in box planters that hung on the railings of my front and side porches. I use to buy multi colored ones-pink, purple, orange, white and yellow and mix them up in each planter. As the summer wore on and they prospered, the multi colored containers became even more beautiful with the various colors looking like a rainbow. I also had a pink plant called Impatience whose leaves and flowers grew downward and they hung long and had this at the mailbox. One day, the mail lady said it was the prettiest plant on her mail run.

When my son was Bar Mitzvah in 1978, for the festive party, I had big long vases of red, white, black and silver flowers. The colors were the theme of the reception party. The black ones were dyed black and were quite outstanding and the silver ones too. They were exceptionally lovely.

Flowers and gardens are uplifting and it is said that a garden is the best alternative therapy. That is why flowers are sent to people who are sick in hospitals and of course to funerals to honor the deceased.

A friend told me that for her forty-fifth birthday, her husband and sons planted a maple tree in their front garden; that is what she requested for her gift. It would be a lifetime gift, growing and prospering each year. Our late friend John Scott gave us each for our birthdays one year, a small plant for the garden. He loved his garden in the front and back of his Hampden home. We planted each of them and sadly, the squirrels and the rabbits must have eaten the both of them up the winter before this mild winter we had.

I looked out there one day recently and I think I am seeing one of them in the back (mine) trying to sprout up in remembrance of our late friend. I hope it survives and grows tall. When we first moved into our home forty-eight years ago; the owner of the apartment building I lived in with Mom and Dad before I married, gave us a cutting of a Crepe Myrtle bush. We planted it proudly on the side in the back and from a tiny plant of about 7 inches; it has grown over these many years to be about six feet tall. Every year it blooms on the exact day as most Crepe Myrtles do, about August first to the third. I think on leap year it gets befuddled and blooms even earlier with large pink foliage. I think of the kind man who gave us this planting and it is prettier than the one he cut it from. He and his wife are long gone; but the plant lives in their honor.

Plants, flowers, seeds from the nursery or Home Depot or wherever you purchase them become like members of your family; your plant family. When it rains hard and they droop, you feel sad and hope they recover and stand tall again or that a new flower replaces them. When the snow comes heavy in most of our winters here, the perennials are continuous and so is your constant love for them. The perennials survive, as we all hope, we will do too.

Cicero said “I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life.”

As this Mother’s Day is observed, many plants, bunches of flowers, hanging plants and even a single flower will be given in honor of our Moms. My mom is gone now almost twenty-eight years, but every time we plant a new bush, I think that Mom still enjoys it from wherever she is.She loves the color, the scent and the look and even though she never got to work even part time in a florist’s shop; she enjoyed the flowers I would bring her for occasions and seeing them in my garden. She so loved the silver flower corsage for Jeffrey’s Bar Mitzvah party and I pressed it for her in a book as we use to do often when we got corsages; so it remained kind of alive to her. When I danced in a showcase at the dance studio in 2002, the owner gave all of us ladies white carnations. I pressed them and then have them in a vase to remember the great occasion. When Jeffrey’s affair mentioned above and my daughter’s wedding, I had a wonderful lady who would take the still live flowers and do something with them and she inserted them in a frame along with the invitation to the affair and a picture of the bride or the young man who was the person in the party. She just passed on recently and they wrote her up as she did that for a hobby and they were so gorgeous and still are, as they hang in frames in my family room. I remember her name, Janset Nahum and her work honors her memory in that these framed long gone flowers are still alive somehow.

Flowers alive and flowers preserved are a part of our life and our life is a bit lovelier with having ‘known’ them in their beauty in our world.

Thich Nhat Hanh said “May our heart’s garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.” I hope so for all of you when you receive, give or preserve these beauties of Nature.. It has been said that “gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and the sky as the canvas.” Elizabeth Murray said those words and how true they are.

We all need these floral canvases in our daily life. They are our life’s paintings and that is my own saying that I am writing from my heart.