It seems to me that Mennonite ladies used to love lilacs a lot. Or, maybe they still do. What do you think?
Sometimes in the depths of winter, it’s surreal and fun to think about spring flowers. So that’s what I’m doing right now. Thinking about lilacs, the purple ones, and how they smell like the epitome of spring, at least for me. The white lilacs are a little more rare… and I can’t recall their scent.
I grew up on a small family farm, and my grandparents were right next door. My grandmother loved flowers and had a green thumb. Plants thrived under her care, and beautiful flowers were everywhere. There were many, MANY lilacs on the farmyard… but I think only one of the lilac bushes was white. It grew in a more shaded part of the yard, and the way my grandma was so thrilled, so reverent about approaching it, gave me the impression that it was very special.
I walk past a lot of lilacs on my daily stroll. There are a lot of lilacs planted within the older part of Steinbach, and when they bloom, I stop and smell as many of them as I can. They always make me think of my grandma. One spring day in 2017, I stopped and took these two photos — the feature photo, and this one, by the library:
It makes me happy to think about them, on this wintery January evening. I feel like spring will come soon… it won’t be too long before we’ll be burying our faces in lilac blooms again, will it?