Jelly cakes and daffodils

field of flowers

There’s a place where petunias and pansies in reds and blues and edged in frills of white stretch as an endless sea of pretty. Their finery is you, poised in baubles of ranunculi and dainty blush-pink, tea roses that weep of gentle bliss on the waft of yesterday. Their delicate petals wrap snug around a centre oozing in precious, tender nurture.

And in this place, we sip tea from fine porcelain cups laced in pale blue forget-me-nots as we savour raspberry jelly cakes sprinkled in Easter daisies and scones of yellow daffodils with piercing red centres, chuckling and nodding to caught up news.

It’s all you, unwavering in acceptance of all the hydrangeas in their shades of pinks, purples and electric blue, sometimes tinged brown or wilting from a harsh reality that takes nothing from their beauty.

As gladioli from heights of cherry and burgundy, you watch in adoring eye from the curling lips of flowers, guiding in gentle care.

Your garden of fertile flourishes forever, eternal in the warm buttercups and lemons of heavenly jonquils, indestructible and surviving in the most abandoned of gardens.

And yet there’s this other place, a chasm of gaping void strewn in unsuspecting boulders and glaciers of splintered shatterings. The dark, barren expanse sweeps beyond the horizon as a vast vacuum of loss, where cups of teas and coffees when the day’s tea quota has been reached, and cream puffs of whipped cream and soft, biscuity chocolate hedgehog are no more.

Still, the fuchsias continue to flower, twirling as ballerinas in their tutus on the gist of gardenias, ever dependable in their orange blossom honey and refined bloom.

The nods are forever free in your garden, among the tulips and snapdragons, the lilacs, violets, dahlias and peonies … in forever love.