The cute corridor of creativity

 

I go and pick-up my niece from the university hostel over the weekends. The last spring was a special one on the campus. The head gardener was a man who loved his job—the result was a beautiful flowery world; rows and rows of healthy, well-cared flowers. The flowers danced, smiled, grew old and died under the merciless April sun that followed the short north Indian spring.

I picked up many varieties of dry flowers to store and use them as seeds during the next season. My little garden is overloaded with plants and trees. The only space available was in the pots of rose plants, about a dozen of them. This January I mixed the seeds with soil and dung manure and layered them in the pots having single rose plants. There they came out heralding a lovely spring.

Hundreds of chamomiles, a daisy like small flower with little white petals around a yellow core, waved at me in February and March. Chamomile is a lovely flower, which is used as flavoring agent in food and beverages. There were so many of them in the crowded little space in the pots. The space was limited but they gave their best. They couldn’t grow to full length but even the tiniest ones among them smiled and offered a flower to some lone bee or butterfly. The chamomiles had beaten all other varieties to bloom as a colony.

The present university gardener doesn’t seem too sincere about his job as can be guessed from the absence of flowers save for some marigolds. I think the chamomile angels attracted the fancy of a poet and carried the survival of their colony in his little yard. I saw some honeybees among the chamomiles. At least some tiny honeycomb somewhere not too far!

The chamomiles dazzled for almost two months and died under hot April sun, their withering looks asking me to preserve their seeds for the next season. I did as asked.

I pull out the dry stalks carefully avoiding injuring the stunted growth of gaillardia grandiflora (blanket flower) which had been trying to seek a way out of the dense crop of chamomiles. There we have the runner up. A few green leafy sprouts of blanket flowers now growing hurriedly to make the most of whatever the season has to offer. Their soft leafy sprouts had been struggling to come out and kiss the air above and dazzle their smiles.

Within a week of the clearing around them one of them smiled its ornamental orange red smile. So they occupy the second position. It’s a hybrid plant in the sunflower family. I have put the pots under the shade to allow dozens of them to smile even in this heat. These are brave flowers.

I hope some lone flower of some other variety will also blossom up to claim the third position. Sometimes just being there earns you a standing among the top three. So come on you some lone ranger, plow your way up!