Imagine

I got into a lively roadside chat with a friendly older woman who works at a garden shop.

Since the COVID crisis, she says, mini flowering pots have been selling like anything.

Surely it’s because, with outing restrictions in place, more people feel that “living healthily with flowers” is the way to spend their time at home meaningfully.

For me, doing work involving flowers, it’s a most gladdening realization on the part of so many people.

Indeed, flowers possess talents we don’t have—varied colors and scents, lovable shapes and expressions—and are companions of the living Earth that give us peace and healing.

But the older woman’s next remark disappointed me a little.

“Everyone buys the pots already in full bloom. Even though the time left to enjoy the flowers is short.”

You’re quite right.

If they bought them still in bud, the pleasure of raising them and of admiring them would only grow. Rather than merely catching flowers as “cute” or “pretty” in the immediate moment, “imagine,” as John Lennon also says, being able to keep company with flowers with room to spare in your heart.