This is a post that was first published in my private blog on Friday, June 6, 2008 titled simply ‘Sweet Jasmine’. I reproduce it again three years later to celebrate the beauty of this plant that was just moved out to my front porch a couple weeks ago thanks to the onset of warmer weather. The beauty of the plant and the story behind it is one for the files! It is also one that is apropos for the day today: a day eighteen years ago today that I decided to say ‘I Do’ to a man as sweet as the fragrance of these jasmines. By the way, my wedding was full of jasmines in all the decorations everywhere. Original post follows:
Here’s a picture story of my lovely jasmine plant, which is really my firstborn’s, but I suppose she and I are the ones who care for it, and therefore I feel somewhat possessive about it. And possessive is only one of many things that I feel about it— I feel a sense of wonder in knowing that this lovely plant sitting on my kitchen windowsill came into being with a lowly cutting from a large ‘mother plant’ all the way back in India; I feel a sense of awe in my mother’s bold and scheming ways in how she smuggled that little plant cutting into the shores of this country four years ago (summer of 2005), right under the very noses of the US Dept. of Agriculture, the vigilante agency that patrols every port to ensure that no fruits, flowers or plants enter for fear of disease and such; I feel a sense of great nostalgia for my childhood memories of the jasmine bush in the corner of our front lawn that put on a production all summer long, and for the long garlands we wove to wear in our hair (and we wove it the proper way with only the string, no needles please!); and finally, I feel a sense of being immersed in pure beauty–crisp and white and fragile and fragrant–flooding the kitchen and even the rest of the house.
Sweet jasmine, you are fleeting in your beauty, but everlasting in your determination to come back year after year, no matter where you’re planted.
From these pictures, you can’t smell the sweet fragrance, but you can see the sweet buds and blooms as they slowly unfold their petals. This is yet another show that I hope will go on…
And for old times’ sake, here’s a picture of my firstborn sitting in the front lawn of my childhood home with the jasmines from the big jasmine plant in her hair!
