FLOWER FRIENDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 137, 31 August 1927, Page 6

FLOWER FRIENDS

Different flowers appeal to different parts of our natures. We love roses because of their pride and beauty, but we would never quite dare to make friends of them: they are a little removed I from us in their regal, sophisticated splendour. A madonna lily is a pure and lovely thing, but perhaps for that reason we never feel it would be correct to treat it with familiarity. Hollyhocks and sunflowers are as high as our aspirations, much higher than our hearts. Spring flowers are the nearest to us, probably because they sychronise with that eternal spring that despite the worries and trials, the fears and anxieties, the wars and rumours of wars, and all the gloomy prophecies of the great pyramid that try to make humanity old before its time, still persists in returning, in the perpetual cycle of life, to the human heart. Golden-crowned daffodils in the window' of a cool room with the sun splashing swift light patterns across their tall, slender bodies; crocuses in the garden, baby things dressed in yellow, mauve, and white, looking up from the broad bosom of mother earth with their fingers in their mouths; delicate anemones, inclining to early frailty; violets, trying to live up to their name for shyness, but wanting you all the time to bury your nose in them; hyacinths that match themselves so cleverly to the bowl you plant them in: tall, dreaming narcissi, absorbed in the stillness of selfcontemplation; brilliant, self-confident tulips—all these come up at the time of the renewal of youth in physical and human nature, and there is no flower, however beautiful, belonging to another season, that takes quite the same place in our affections.