Rhododendron

When you prune a rhodendron, you must do so immediately after it's blooms have shrivelled and begun to drop. The plant begins to form new buds for next year at the tips of it's branches long before you can see them, and if you interrupt this invisible growth, there will be no blossoms next spring.

In her book eat pray love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes "The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough, but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotious and endless waves of transformation."

We rail against change, even when we see it's transformative wonders all around us. The caterpillar wraps himself into a rough brown cocoon to emerge as a butterfly, the blossoms on a tree shrivel and die for it's fruit to grow, a womb swells with new life to be left hollow and barren when it delivers it's gift to the world. The shrivelled stems of the rhododendron harbor the bud for a new spring's blossoming. This is a mysterious and magical question we are blessed with - what tomorrow will take seed in the ashes of our own private yesterday?