Flowers

Walking through a small park this morning, hidden from the main road, I was surprised by the abundance of flowers. The wood was covered with anemone blanda, the wild variety, the petals a pale pink-lilac when still in bud and the first day they open. The next day they turn an almost pure white, making a very beautiful carpet under the still bare trees. In the Keukenhof they have planted the blue variety, which is not indigenous. They grow under an avenue of mature beech trees, before their silver barked branches come into leaf, and open wide to the sun, if there is any. Here the floor was not only carpeted with anemones and yellow celandine or pilewort with their tiny, egg-shaped leaves, but to my amazement also with fritillary, creamy white and purple ones with their astonishing chequered petals, which is the reason why they are also called chequered lily. They only thrive in flood meadows, or very moist soil, which is the case here. I wonder if they were planted years ago, when the park was the garden of a mansion. The house still stood when I was a student, but was broken down and replaced by the ugliest and most unimaginative high rise building I've ever seen, meant to be a home for nurses training  at the nearby academic hospital. Those days have long gone and nurses now have to find their own accommodation. So it was used till fairly recently as a centre for asylum seekers, mostly from Africa. Now it looks as if it is empty and there are rumours that it will be broken down . It seems nothing is built for life, at least for my life. It is amazing how quickly buildings come and go, like many protestant churches which were built at great cost for the believers in the fifties and sixties, to disappear again in the nineties, or to be turned into funeral parlours, private dwellings, showrooms for camping equipment or mosques. Last year a passer-by told me that he had just seen a kingfisher near one of the ponds in the park, a very rare bird in these parts.

         The park cheered me up on my way to an appointment for an unpleasant examination in the nearby hospital, which fortunately was scheduled for very early in the morning so that I had no time to worry about it. I had expected old men and women in the waiting room, but to my surprise there were men and women of all ages, and many of them.

         Later I had to walk through the park again to pick up the car, no punishment. A strong cup of coffee revived me and prepared me for a long session at the hairdresser's, and lunch with a niece who is rather sad as she is in the middle of divorce proceedings.

         Tonight I have to attend a meeting which I am totally unprepared for as yet, so I had better do something. But the sun has come out, and it is too lovely outside to be cooped up in the house. I may have to play dumb tonight.

fritillary