The Aroma, Sight and Taste of Pleasure

Since there is not really a yard at this townhouse, the garden is a number of containers. This year, we focused on planting vegetables and herbs rather than flowers. Just in more of a mood to be practical.

This week, the cucumbers bloomed with these beautiful bright yellow flowers. The pepper plants have these little white flowers. The tomatoes, of course, have little yellow flowers.

A friend, once upon a time, kept picking all the little yellow flowers off the tomatoes figuring that would make them grow bigger. Then she asked someone why her plants never got tomatoes.

Basil has not yet flowered, but it is expanding into some wonderful big leaves. Chives and parsley are exploding with growth like their own little fireworks show. Oregano is just expanding slowly and steadily. Green beans have filled their allotted spaces and the bush beans, as they call them, will in not too long a time, be providing us with a delicious harvest.

It is a life lesson to watch these seeds and starter plants take a little while to acclimate to their new homes. Their flowers last for a little while, but there is much happiness in knowing that each flower will soon become something good to eat and will become dinner one evening. Sometimes it just takes a little while, and we have to let it flower and provide us with nourishment on its own schedule. They take a certain amount of time, and that is just the natural order of things.

A little earth, a fair amount of water, not too much sun, and life expands. We bring our spirit out to play with the plants and help tend the garden. We nourish the plants and then the plants nourish us. We help each other. Flowers nourish the spirit with their bursts of visual joy, but they are not the only viewing pleasure. There are all sorts of green shapes is the other plant leaves. And then there is the pleasure of the palate, which comes after the color and the aroma. Satisfaction comes in waves. Life affirming, simple, beautiful waves.

There are many different pleasures in life, and this is one of them.