Focus on life: Week 7 - The beauty of Flowers

Happy Valentine's Day - and remember, there is a giveaway going on, enter here!

Sally Russick of The Studio Sublime is hosting a year long challenge which is... sublime... as you'd expect with such a studio name. The challenge is named 'Focusing on Life' and every week Sally is sending a prompt on what should we focus the following week.

This weeks's prompt is one after my soul:

This week take a moment to bring a little happiness to your soul and enhance your well being. Take a moment to enjoy the beauty of flowers.

It is truly no challenge at all - I have discovered a few years back that I was getting the blues during this shortest month of the year, which seems the longest and dullest. In searching for an answer to my problem, I found it in flowers! Since then I made it a point to have blooming flowers on my desk and in other rooms of the house every single day of the year. Not only plants - which I always have... but blooms: colourful, beautiful blooms.

Believe it or not, this is what you can currently find on my desk:

  

The spring blooms: they bring me memories and they smell divine, not to mention the colours. I buy them every year, a few times a year, and in the fall I put them in the garden, hoping they'll come back next spring (they mostly do)

Then - the usual suspect, my beloved African Violet. I learned to care for them as a child: my mom has the house full of them and she's the type she will talk and even sing to the flowers. She thinks people think she's crazy - but I love the idea of having a relationship with the flowers. While I don't hold lengthy conversations with my African Violets, I know they are surely happy when I touch them and visit every day and check on their foliage. For years I would buy the pots from the store, bring them home and watch helplessly how the flowers will fade and never come back. Until 2 or 3 years ago when something changed (probably with me - I wish I could say what it is, but I don't) and they started taking turns and bloom almost continuously. There is hardly a week when one of them is not in full bloom - and I love it that way :)

Last, but surely not least, my most recent love:

The deep purple orchid

 The white orchid

The large pink orchid

The other pink and most unique orchid

Yes - the orchids. Before coming to Canada I have seen orchids only at the Botanical Garden: as a student I spent long summer days in the Gardens, the campus was located close to the Botanical Gardens and I used to do my homework on the grass in the park, under huge blooming Magnolia trees (that would have been something to photograph back then! as it is, I only have the vivid memory of those moments).

I still remember my first orchid - I have either received it as a gift or bought it myself and it was living in our bathroom, one that had a window and lots of sun. She liked it there - but I didn't know how to care for it back then... after the blooms faded, it never bloomed again.

Then 3 years ago I received one for my birthday, then 2 at Christmas, then another one for my next birthday. Only this time - I read the instructions and followed them. What do you think?! They bloom every few months: all 4 of them at the same time. Two of them have even 2 branches this year!

I am amazed and I feel blessed every time I see their blooms: delicate, unique and so completely exotic!

I am offering you my flowers this week and I hope you'll visit the other participants gathered in Sally's virtual Botanical Gardens this week :)

Thank you, again, Sally for the opportunity to search for my soul every week: it is an interesting experience, and one I love and enjoy enormously!