A teacher once said that if the Earth were deprived of flowers half of its vitality would disappear. In the East the ancients believed that the sweetest flowers grew by the temples.

When I was a young boy I watched my grandfather grow dahlia flowers every summer in a dirt plot no bigger than the size of a car – for the rest of the year the land was barren. We lived in a concrete jungle with no grass, trees or gardens anywhere. The sounds of Mozart, Brahms and Tchaikovsky drifted from the window of his ground floor apartment. For the months of summer we would sit on the steps every week and watch as the plants slowly grew and transformed the seemingly useless plot of dirt into a beautiful green garden and then into the most amazing colourful flowers. Perhaps it was the music the plants loved, along with my grandfather’s passion for the bulbs he so treasured. When the summer finished he would dig the bulbs up and the next spring start the cycle again. It was my first experience with flowers and music – a beautiful synthesis of color and sound and light and love. For me it was a mesmerizing time that left a lasting impression.

Now when I pass a garden with dahlias I stop and think in my heart of that time and remember those gentle moments we shared, sitting on the steps together in the sunshine, watching the dahlias grow.
 

“Flowers are the moments representative of things that are in themselves eternal.”
Sri Aurobindo