It was a balmy late afternoon.
The sky was a glowing, washed-out blue. White balls of cotton bobbed about merrily on that sea of blue-ness. Some had coagulated greyly, ponderous with moisture.
It had rained all morning. Steam rose in warm wafts from humid earth under my feet. Somewhere, far off, it was raining again, after a hot and humid pause. The air was resplendent with the aroma of those slaked lands.
The garden was flamboyantly green in the waning, refracted sunlight. The carpet glass really was picking up its reluctant feet after a dank, chilly winter. The roses were bursting forth in an unrestrained riot of spirits. The wild roses- delicate, fragile bunches of deep pinkness- could made your head swim with their heady aroma. The marigolds were on their last leg; the dahlias almost gone.
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I breathed in the garden, feeling blessedness condensing in moist droplets, deep within my consciousness. How did I get so lucky, I wondered for the umpteenth time! I marveled at my good fortune, one figurative eye cocked warily watching out for the imps who love to snatch the blessedness away the moment you get conscious of it. As I sat on the swing, time sidled by, drop by deliberate drop. Oh, the delicious laziness of it all!
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
~Marthe Troly-Curtin
My roving eye wandered over the robust jasmine bushes alternating with the roses. The jasmine is flowering, I noted happily.
What!?
I blinked in surprise. How could the jasmine be flowering already?! Hadn’t it just finished flowering? It seemed barely a few weeks when I had picked the last crop of fragrant jasmines! And it was here again! Had one year gone by already?! When did that happen? I looked around involuntarily, expecting to find the year slipping away surreptitiously.
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
~ Jean de La Bruyère
An uneasy agitation ruffled my inner placidity rudely. One year over? I asked myself incredulously. Surely there was some mistake! One year couldn’t have gone by so quickly. You’re being idiotic, I told myself sternly.
It wasn’t merely a question of the jasmine flowering. The question was- what did I do, from the time it flowered last, to its new flowering again? Nothing came to mind as I ransacked the many cupboard of my mind. Dear Lord!!
Which year is this? I desperately asked the fleecy balls of white in the sky. You are the time keepers, aren’t you? How can a year have gone by? How come you didn’t shake me awake? Why, just a while ago we enjoyed the season’s first mangoes! It isn’t yet the mango season yet; how can the jasmine start to flower? Does jasmine flower twice a year nowadays?! I glared at the innocuous balls in fury.
As if on cue, I heard a fruit-seller called out, “Mangoes! Sweet mangoes! Season’s first mangoes!”
Oh, perfect! That’s just what I needed!
Jasmine
Sometimes, the year goes so soon, or seems to, that the small changes seem big ones, and the big ones we don’t notice 🙂 Though from your post, I do love that garden of yours
Yes we do miss the forest for the trees sometimes. I love my garden too! 😀 😀
First..! 🙂
Ah, Mangoes 🙂
I shall spend considerable time in the garden when I visit! Sounds lovely 🙂
It isn’t as lovely as some of the other gardens I have visited. But this one’s mine… 😀
Sounds perfectly tranquil. The jasmine was flowering here as well before I left on vacation. Mangoes, these days I am enjoying the raw ones. The sweet ones are awaited. 🙂
How time flies nowadays it seems! One season is barely over before the other is upon us. 🙂
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Enjoyed reading this beautiful and refreshing post:)
Thank you Vishal! 🙂
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Such a fragrant fresh post.
Thank you Alka! So good to see you here! 🙂
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Beautiful post! I love that ‘being with you’ quote.
Thank you Catherine! Welcome to my space!
When I saw the title Jasmine, I had to read it. 🙂 How I love Jasmines and mangoes and I miss them soo much 🙁 So true…seasons change and we don’t even notice how fast time flies…and what have we done from last season to this……?
Uncomfortable questions Prudhvi! And we often don’t find answers to them.
What a poetic contemplation this is! Love it. You are so good with invoking such reflective questions in your readers’ minds and hearts. I found ‘How did I get so lucky’ line so moving. Indeed we so often forget to count our blessings. Beautiful writing, as always!
Beloo, i know you’ll believe me when I tell you that I shared only the question that appeared in my mind as I sat in the garden that day. The buds really did take me aback. May the fact that it has been like moonsoon all year this year had something to do with it.
I couldn’t imagine one full year having gone by. And what did i do in that year? Nothing significant… apart from launching Rugs Of Life. And well, that’s not a small thing, but one full year?!
I’m trying to forget how many months, weeks and days it has. And hours. 🙂
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Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?! 🙂
I love the pic of the jasmine! The one in my garden isn’t yet in full bloom!
Time flies indeed when you are having fun. Before you know it, a year has gone by… 🙂
That is a gorgeous jasmine! Time indeed flies when you are too busy to notice the passing of time. I think it is a good thing because if you had had all the time to notice the changing seasons in their minute details, it would have meant that you had nothing else to keep you occupied. besides, it is good to be surprised by Nature once in a while, isn’t it? And oh, you are indeed lucky to have that wonderful garden 😀
That’s a far happier way of looking at it I’m sure :). I shall convince myself that I was too busy and engrossed to notice time flying by. Oh, the stories we tell ourselves in order to live! 😀
Indeed i feel lucky. My gratitude for every aspect of my life is deep and abiding.
Thank you for your warm words!
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