My imagination ran wild, a few autumns ago, at the Costco store. There on the shelf was a big bag of eighty crocus bulbs, for a very reasonable price. I envisioned an explosion of the purple flowers lining our sidewalk leading up to our front door. What a wonderful welcome that would be to visitors. I immediately grabbed the bag of bulbs and put it in my cart. I also bought a big bag of grape hyacinth bulbs to line the other side of the sidewalk. What an impressive display I was going to plant.
Once back home, I spent an hour and an half kneeling on the cold damp ground, as I dug in my bulbs, and covered them over. When spring arrived, the disappointment began. Most of them came up, a few of the crocuses were purple, but the vast majority were white, which just didn’t carry the same punch. The grape hyacinth, that did come up were small, scattered, and patchy.
The next spring, the number of crocuses and hyacinths diminished even more. Since then, every year, there are less and less that bother coming up.
So far this spring, I have one purple crocus and two whites bordering my sidewalk. My disappointment seems to be growing a lot faster than my crocuses.
I walked out yesterday afternoon, and took a closeup photo of the lone purple crocus. From a distance, a single crocus can’t give the impact of a huge colorful swath of them, but if you take the time to kneel and get up closes, so that you can peer down into the flower, the beauty of the lone crocus, does equal the splash of color of a group.
To view my paintings, go to: www.davidmarchant.ca
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