Just living is not enough, one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.

Antirrhinum is a genus of plants commonly known as snapdragons from the flowers' fancied resemblance to the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed (thus the 'snap'). As a child, I loved to pinch the tiny individual blossoms and make the "dragon mouth" open and close.


Snapdragons are perennial plants that do best in full or partial sun. They are available in a range of heights: dwarf (6 to 8 inches), medium (15 to 30 inches) and tall (30 to 48 inches). They uniformly bear a whorl of leaves atop slender stalks. Their large, blossom-laden flower heads are faintly fragrant and come in in a wide assortment of bright colours, white, yellow, pink and burgundy.

For the detail-minded among my gentle readers:

Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Lamiales
Family: Plantaginaceae
Genus: Antirrhinum

Thou unassuming Commonplace Of nature, with that homely face...

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but ‘if’ I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

Celebration!

Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

~ Denise Levertov ~

On the stem Of memory imaginations blossom.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the seasons of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom spring begins.

~ A.C. (Algernon Charles) Swinburne ~

Trees grope with itch for Spring! Go on and itch, Trees, you don't know anything....

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast.

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.

A tree that may in Summer wear,
A nest of robins in her hair.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain,
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
Only God can make a tree.

~ Joyce Kilmer ~

Pretty in pink.

Cyclamen is a plant from the Primulaceae family. I've heard friends in Shimla refer to it as sowbread and sometimes Persian Violet. These are perennial herbaceous plants, with surface or underground tubers. Each leaf and flower grows on its own stem which appears identical, except in height.

The leaves grow on stems up to 8 cm tall and form a tightly bunched circular disk of leaves. Leaves are rounded to triangular, 2-10 cm long and 2-7 cm broad, and usually variegated with a pale silvery horseshoe-shaped mark round the middle of the leaf.

The flowers have four to five petals which grow erect at at almost a 90° angle out of the bud. I've found white, pink and purple ones in Shimla so far. Still looking for dark-red cyclamen.

Kingdom: Plantae, Family: Myrsinaceae. Genus Cyclamen.

I come to visit thee agen
My little flowerless cyclamen;
To touch the hand, almost to press
That cheer'd thee in thy loneliness.
What could thy careful guardian find
Of thee in form, of me in mind,
What is there is us rich or rare,
To make us claim a moment's care?
Unworht to be so carest,
We are but withering leaves at best.

~ Walter Savage Landor ~

Yellow

In certain Western cultures, yellow is a colour associated with age and aging, also cowardice. Not so in India! Here, we associate it with auspicious beginnings, with spring, with joy. We associate it with bravery and patriotism and valour of the highest order.

This morning when I went for a walk all I could see was bursts of yellow everywhere and I too felt like singing:
मेरा रंग दे बसंती चोला
मेरा रंग दे हाय
मेरा रंग दे बसंती चोला
माये रंग दे बसंती चोला

जिस चोले को पहन शिवाजी खेले अपनी जान पे
जिसे पहन झांसी की रानी मिट गयी अपनी आन पे
आज उसी को पहन के निकला, पहन के निकला
आज उसी को पहन के निकला हम मस्तों का टोला
मेरा रंग दे बसंती चोला
मेरा रंग दे
ओ मेरा रंग दे बसंती चोला
माये रंग दे बसंती चोला

दम निकले इस देश की खातिर बस इतना अरमान है
एक बार इस राह में मरना सौ जन्मों के समान है
देख के वीरों की कुरबानी अपना दिल भी बोला

It would be futile to attempt a translation of this rousing ballad which Bhagat Singh sang as he marched to the gallows... Suffice it to say that the singer asks his mother to dye his robe to the colour of spring. He invokes the valorous memory of Shivaji and Rani Lakshmibai (the Queen of Jhansi) who died fighting for their country. He says, inspired by the sacrifices made by patriots gone ahead, his only desire is to die for his country, for one such death equals a hundred lives....