Flowers and fruits!

 

The Micky Mouse plant in our garden has flowers and fruits all through the year! 

The yeller flowers offer nectar to Honey bees and  Sunbirds. The red blossoms give fruits surrounded by red sepals which are green initially green that would turn dark blue when ripe. The Bulbul birds came searching for this berry!

It is a plant with medicinal value and ornamental in appearance when in full bloom. 

This plant in our garden has a history of about forty years. It grows to give a rounded appearance. It needs little attention except for the pruning once in two years. 

It is a plant that symbolises all the pleasures of childhood and joyful experiences of growing up. The bright yellow flowers symbolise that message of delight and fantasies of childhood !

I write this remembering children in the Gaza strip, where their lives are lived dangerously waiting for food to arrive at meal times from the food distribution centre and made to flee to bunkers when there is a siren of bomb threat! 

How thoughtless of the 'civilised leaders' of the nation of Israel, to take way the normal childhood of hundreds of children, as they have a racial discriminatory attitude towards the Palestinians! 

How can we make childhood to be a blossom of hope and cheer for children ! 

Children in the rest of the world where they have everything in plenty to live well, are prisoners of the machine language of the TV, mobile phones and computer games! Theirs also is a reduced living without the fullness of childhood that a family and social environment can offer!

Is it not true that the habit of children to read books has been replaced by visual entertainment without moral content and value based approach to life? The visual content is entertainment and often mixed with corrupt values! 

There is a world for children where they receive parenting support to help in their formation and sibling attention to grow up rooted in social values that shape a healthy society!

How can we turn childhood into an experience to live longingly to grow up, receiving the fullness of life where love, attention, care, and opportunity abound!

I received a photo from a mother yesterday of her two children engaged in drawing sketches, by watching the scenes around in a garden. A mother bird flying into the nest, where there are a few eggs was a delightful drawing to meditate upon! How secure that child feels to have such an inner experience of a safe home, wishing the same for the bird family! 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)