This week the weather has blessedly been as it should be at the height of an English summer: the right amount of sunshine, a cooling breeze, and temperatures hovering around 25 degrees. It has been a week of relief, after the brutal, record-breaking mini heatwave towards the end of June, even more intense than the record-breaking mini heatwave at the end of May. During those days of scorching heat and soaring daytime temperatures, I could only enjoy or tend my little garden early in the morning, or else in the relative cool of the evening. I would return to sit in the dimly lit darkness a few hours later, reviewing the day whilst trying to catch the whisper of a breeze. And there were also some sultry nights when the heat would drive me out again in the very early hours, to stand blearily in the pre-dawn pearliness, the air already full of birdsong which seemed far more energetic than I felt... before coming indoors for an attempt at a couple more hours of sleep.
It was morning, around 8am, on what would be one of our hottest ever days. As I turned towards these roses I could see their vibrant redness caught up in the already brilliant sun. But then, after a second, all I could see was gold... A brilliant yellow lily, which had somehow grown up within the rose bush's embrace, and had flowered without my noticing it - until now! And oh! How it had flowered... and how it now blazed, radiant in the sunlight, causing a tiny leap of joy within me; drawing my eyes, and compelling my attention, and my wonder at its presence. And how it lifted my weary, sleep-deprived spirits, simply by being there! How, too, its slender, curling filaments seemed to beckon me closer, inviting me to more joy and wonder in simply gazing on this trinity of golden blooms.
All of which goes some way towards explaining why I had not been looking too closely at some of my plants. Yes, I had watered diligently, tended and encouraged the more fragile, and deadheaded almost daily... I had also admired the garden from indoors, from the kitchen or living room, as bees buzzed and the fierce, fiery sun set leaves and flowers ablaze... But this garden is shaped like a stubby L, and I cannot see the stubby part unless I am in it. And for some reason, I hadn't looked too closely at the rose bush in this corner, until I went to deadhead it.
We give meanings to different flowers - sometimes obviously so. Unsurprisingly, yellow lilies symbolise joy and gladness, gratitude and friendship, hope and new beginnings. And all of that and more was caught up in me, in that blessed moment of delight and surprised beholding.
We invariably use white lilies in Christian art, but maybe we should use yellow ones, too!
And you; what has surprised you and blessed you with delight recently?
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