Lilac lessons
When I started this newsletter about making life good and meaningful, I turned first to lilacs to create the logo. Not only are they a gloriously-scented mass of tiny beautiful flowers, every spring they teach me an important lesson.
Lilacs are fleeting—they bloom for about two weeks, if you are lucky. They don’t last long in a vase, either.* They are the sweetest flash in a pan you ever could imagine.
And I love them so.
Lilacs remind me that every day I don’t go stick my face in a blooming bush and breathe deep is a day I missed out. Every day I don’t have a small bunch of flowers by my bed to smell first thing in the morning is an opportunity lost. These tiny, ephemeral blooms.
If the Japanese love cherry blossoms because the delicate petals are a reminder that life is fleeting, then I love lilacs because they are a reminder to take advantage of it all. To be a glutton for this beauty, this fragrance. They remind me of the Julia Child quote: “Life itself is the proper binge.”
Because life may be a binge, but it is also full of other things—work and responsibilities and bad news and war and taxes and laundry and it’s so very easy to skip the flowers, to not go for the walk, to miss the sunset. It’s so easy to tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow, and then the next day.
But lilac season’s days are numbered, I don’t want to miss any of them.
This is true more broadly. Our days are numbered—none of know how many. I want to make sure I fill up as many as I can. I want to notice the beauty, the pleasures, the opportunities for good. The sucky things in life are often non-negotiable; I want to pour delight into all the other places I can.
This week, that looks like lilacs. For you it might look like something else entirely.
Whatever it is, I hope you breathe deep and enjoy every moment 💜
*If you are a lilac lover and sad that they wilt so quickly in a vase, take a hammer and give the bottom of their stems a few whacks to break them up a bit. It allows the flowers to access more water and last longer.
Thanks so much for this comment, Torrie! So kind to share knowledge, very generous of you. I'll definitely try to adopt more of these.
I have read about the cutting stem method, but it just seems so fiddly to me--and hard with thin stems (perhaps I should see if there is a video on YouTube or somewhere). What I do is to just bash the stems with a hammer, which opens up the fibers to absorb more water. I think it accomplishes pretty much the same thing.
How exciting that you are flower farming. Where are you located? I bet you create all sorts of beauty ❤️
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
When a child in the 50’s in Chicago, our neighbor, Mrs. Williams, had huge lilac trees on her property. When they bloomed, all the children in the neighborhood would go to her house and she would cut and wrap bunches for us and we brought them to our teachers. For days, our elementary school smelled so beautiful. I never see a lilac, I don’t think of her.