A single Crocus

Reflecting on a sign of Spring

It’s been a drizzly week, but one day whilst washing up, my eyes were suddenly drawn to the saturated oval of gold waving from the soil outside my kitchen window. An old friend.

A lone crocus.

I like the height of crocuses, they peer up from ground as sunny, stumpy dwarves, reminding us you don’t have to be a larger than life show-off to be noticed, appreciated.

Every year, I wonder why I planted it there, by itself, when they seem to want to be in huddles.

Maybe at the time, I’d planted other bulbs and it’s the only survivor. There it sits, before I’ve even entertained trimming back the dregs and straggles of the spent season. It is held in chains of snaking sedum, the brooding hearts of cyclamen and punkish spikes of black grass.

I’ve come to love that single crocus and what it represents to me.

Sometimes, I’m sure its flimsy neck will break on the weight of that clownish lollipop head, but time and time again it props itself up, mustard-keen and hardy.

Much as I admire a clump of regal purples, (who seem so fond of gathering outside churches or village greens to gossip like prim, petite ladies), this crocus - my crocus - feels like a newly struck match about to set the world on fire.

And in a small way, it does. My latent passions that sleep as dragons through the drudge of Winter, are stirred and woken.

Right now, Spring is sparking like a dodgy cigarette lighter in the rain, but soon, how the streets will be claimed by the gleaming crowns of daffodils and dandelions!

Crocus rhymes with ‘focus’ and that’s what my single, stoic flower seems to say.

Focus on those fleeting ideas that play upon your mind as twinkly melodies. Could they become glorious full blown symphonies?

Focus on gold born of toiling root in soil.

Focus on first breath of Spring…….for breath is flame and flame is king.

You are green and alive!

Dare bloom.

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