There were letters in the Irish Times today about hearing the first lawnmower and daffodils in January. Our balcony plants are also sprouting leaves.
For me though, spring is all about the tulips.
There are months in the winter when they are no where to be seen.
One of my strongest childhood memories is of lazy days in Nahariyya. Two hours of school followed by the beach or the pool followed by tuna, onions, tomato and mayonnaise in my friend Ciara’s apartment. Ciara lived right opposite the UN rec house. I lived a whole ten minute walk away. I envied her the proximity to the center of fun, games, betamax video tapes, barbeques, , the old shipping container turned into a games room for children, National Day celebrations (there were a lot of these, Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Fiji e.t.c.), free cups of black tea and coffee, the dart board, the swings, the stage constructed from plywood that was excellent for honing skateboarding skills. If you couldn’t do a 360 degree turn on the plywood, you couldn’t do one anywhere.
Adult activities that took place in the rec house were drinking, dining (pepper steak anyone?) and socialising. Happy hour. The helicopter from Beirut used to arrive into South Lebanon just in time for those travelling on it to get back across the border into Israel and back to Nahariyya for Happy Hour. Outside of happy hour revelry there were repentant activities like aerobics. Aerobics a la Jane Fonda. Activities were organised to amuse the wives whilst their husbands were away on OP. One activity that I clearly remember was flower arranging. The women were quite obsessed with flower arranging. One flower arranging event took place in our apartment. I remember making an orange hedgehog with cheese cubes on cocktail sticks for this event. The height of eighties sophistication. Bridget Jones mentions the height of sophistication being mini gherkins. I think her mother would have had a cheese hedgehog too. For the flower arranging, the wives chattered whilst cutting their wire and oasis. The oasis was then soaked. The greenery placed strategically in various places in the oasis. In order of height. Tallest at the back, making small height reductions until the flowers and greenery were almost at oasis level (to hide the oasis no doubht). After the greenery came the flowers. Then preening of the arrangement and moving around of the flowers and
stalks of greenery. Not too much moving mind you, or you ended up with an oasis of holes that was unable to support anything. I hate flower arrangements made with oasis ever since then. They are so artificial looking. I’ll take decaying gladioli in simple ceramic vases any day of the week.
Or just flowers tied together to make spectacular arrangments. But those with a base of oasis, I just cannot stand.
The best part of flowers is their decay. Decaying flowers are more interesting to me than fresh flowers. I think it is because you start to see different colours. These gladioli are amazing. Such a deep wine colour to start off with. Now turning purple in places.
