As the winter winds to a close and the summer begins, with those dry, dusty breezes already making the afternoons just a little bit sleepy, I want to pause to say thank you for the flowers. Our little garden is a source of so much pleasure – I love to wander across the lawn in the morning, clucking at a new blossom or a bud just about to open. I love to stand in front of the fragrant sweet peas, breathing. I love to push Moy Moy’s wheelchair near the pansies and take her photo with them in the background. This year it has been extra special because of Dad. On my way out the gate to work at least three times a week, there he is in the garden with a pair of scissors, choosing the flowers for his room. He loves having two or even three small bouquets: one for his desk, another by the bed and a third in front of the picture of Mom.

What I love about flowers is how they are available to anyone – even when they are in someone else’s garden, you can still see them if you peer over the wall, you can pluck whatever is hanging outside and with some, like Rath ki Rani (Queen of the Night), you can smell them from wherever you happen to be as long as the wind is right.

Everything about flowers – their colors, their fragrance, their beauty – is glorious, but nothing, perhaps, as much as their integrity: they are whole, as they are, with no worries, no artifice, no pretensions. And if sometimes I “waste” time looking at them for too long, I have this lovely poem by Tagore to set me straight:

On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time.

But it is never lost, my Lord.

Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.

Hidden in the heart of things,

Thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts,

buds into blossoms and flowers into fruitfulness.

I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed

and imagined all work had ceased.

In the morning I woke up and found my garden

full with wonders of flowers.