THE Good Neighbour

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 63, Issue 2, 15 August 1941, Page 165

THE Good Neighbour

BY

MARY

'ftom The lo

JI7HO said that miracles do not V* 7 happen these days? Why, I saw two this morning! Two red earthenware pots stand on my sunny window sill, and, bending over them to-day, I saw two white shoots unfolding their delicate petals to the sun. Hyacinths white hyacinths. The magic of spring once again! Once more the earth stirs, and puts forth new life —in the days to come two shining hyacinths will give their glory io the world . . . two white hyacinths, on MY window sill. 1 can never believe that there are no such things as miracles when spring comes every year. Do you remember the first spring song ever written —and still the loveliest, too. “For 10, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth, The time of the singing of birds is come.” Every word was so true when this Song of Solomon was written so long ago—to-day it rings as true as ever. Spring flowers are early this year. Have you ever paused to think that thoughts and flowers are very much alike? Both can be beautiful, and both can be imperishable the thought in the mind, and the beauty of the flower will live long after its petals are withered and dead. Sometimes I like to think that every word and thought bestowed on me through the years by my dearest friends, live forever as fragrant

flowers blossoming in the garden of my mind. Each sweetest thought is a fragrant bloom, each moment a wide-eyed flower, an everlasting flower of enchantment, blooming in riotous delight in memory’s garden. Few people have learned the art of collecting happy memories; many collect old china, and prints, and books—all good and lovely things, but fragile and perishable. But happy memories are indestructible possessions which nothing can take from 'us—time only adds to them,

mellows them, hallows them. That is what I mean when 1 say flowers and thoughts can both be beautiful an d everlasting things, and it is this time of year, when the earth is athrob with the glorious expectancy of spring, that we realise more fe een ly than ever that the really m i racu l ous an J beautiful things in life, somehow, and curiously, are f oun( l j n suc h sim- i p i e things as w p ite hyacinths. /[ // v