A year of flowers
There is a calendar on the wall next to my desk. For the past few years the calendar has been supplied as a freebie from the company who sells me shipping supplies. There is a selection to choose from and I’ve been in the habit of choosing the garden or landscape calendars. Last winter I noticed a problem with these calendars. The winter months feature pictures of snow. If I want snow in January, all I have to do is look out the window. What I really want in January is sunlit flowers. I want pictures that cheer me up and remind me that spring will be back, not pictures that remind me it is cold and gray outside. I had a similar difficulty with the warmer months. I don’t want pictures of lilacs when lilacs are in bloom. I’m really longing for lilacs a month or two earlier than that. In May lilacs are everywhere, but in March a picture of lilacs is like a preview of good things to come. I realized that I was going to need to make my own calendar. Fortunately my friend Janci takes the most beautiful flower pictures I’ve ever seen and she was willing to share some of them with me. You can see her photos over at photophish.
In the dark months of the year, I crave sunlight and bright colors. So I picked the most sundrenched photos I could find, like this one Janci took of a yellow iris.
For me a big part of spring is watching the succession of blooming flowers. Crocus first, then hyacinths, forsythia, daffodils, tulips, spring iris, flowering trees, and by May the lilacs and roses have begun. I’ve planned my calendar so the flowers appear a month or two before they will actually bloom. I’m hoping this will help me convince my psyche that spring is coming just a little bit early and we can pull out of that winter mood-slump. By the summer months, flowers are everywhere and so I don’t need them on my wall. What I do need is calm cool images to help combat the heat of the summer. Janci has some of those too.
Fall needs flowers again, but I don’t mind if they feel fallish. My psyche is still buoyed up by all those sunlit flowers over the summer.
By December the weather is back to being cold and I need sunlit flowers again. I’ve put my 2009 calendar together. I think it will really help. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll still have a calendar full of Janci’s beautiful pictures and those always make me happy.