NECTAR FROM FLOWERS

Just last Monday I was swimming and sunning on a beach in Antigua. It was hot...summery, and I was aware of myself being grateful to be living in Maine because I'd never do well living in a hot climate. Today its 45 degrees and I haven't seen sun since I returned. Its too cold to plant and I fear if I did, the seeds would rot. My window planted seedlings are tiny with long leggy stems that can barely stand up. What a different set of gardening variables from last year. There is a plant in Antigua called the Century Plant. It grows in hardscrabble soil made up mainly of sand and small rocks. It grows out of the volcanic sediments that made the island originally. The dirt it grows in doesn't have much capacity for retaining moisture but it's leaves are cactusy complete with defensive sharps like thorns. It has an immense lifespan but it flowers only once every hundred years. I am inspired by it's example of patience and perseverance and humbled by it's longevity. It is quite the opposite of the Night Blooming Cereus...another plant that inspired me once to write a poem about it's fleeting moment of fragrant blossoming. The Night Bloomer must be at least 7 years old before it has it's first blossom. When it does flower, the flower bud emerges from the side of a flat succulent leaf that grows all helter skelter amid various shaped shoots and leaves. The blossom is breathtaking...complex, enormous and fragrant...so fragrant the you can get a headache if you happen to witness five blossoms at one time. One flower will spread aroma throughout the entire house. But...the flower opens at dusk and by the following dawn, it's life is passed. It flowers for a few brief hours and then...it's gone.

Maybe it's because I'm 58 instead of 24, but my awe and respect is inspired more by the Century Plant than the Night Bloomer. The Night Bloomer can have seven or eight flowers blossoming at one time for one night year after year. It takes 100 years of life before you see a flower like this one. I enjoy that thought. Why? Because I don't really feel like I've flowered yet. I have always known that I am a late bloomer but how can a bloom be late? Doesn't nature bring the flower to bloom when it's meant to bloom? When all effort to keep the bud closed falls to the wayside, the flower can't help itself and it opens. I feel the resistance of the bud that doesn't want to open...that strives to keep everything under wraps. I see the same phenomenon in my crab apple tree here in Bethel. It has been in the same limbo of full buddedness since I returned from Antigua. It resists opening to the cold...wind and drizzle. Everything awaits that moment when the warm love of sunshine invites out the inner part of the flower and voila...it blossoms. Its really quite hopeful to think that the Century flower is 100 years in the making. That makes my 58 years seem like a flash in time...and it reminds me that blossoming is not an act of will. Something deep inside is building layer on layer and when it can't keep itself held in any more it will feel the presence of warm light and...pop...it will open. Not late, not forced, not anything except what it is when it is. It will be the great great great great great grandchild of this green headed hummingbird that will sip sweet nectar from the next flowering of this particular Century Plant.

Maybe it is like that for dreams too...that one generation dreams a dream but the blossoming of that dream may not occur for several generations. Mmmmm. I do like thinking about that. Thanks Century Plant.