Camellias.

I've never noticed camellias before this spring. For some reason, I think I'd even convinced myself that I didn't care for them. But this year...I don't know why...they seem so remarkable and vivid. I've seen several varieties, some with pale, blushing blossoms that make me think of ballerinas or dreams of ballerinas that I had when I was a little girl. Others bloom like ivory froth in the nest of dark leaves. The leaves are what make the camellias so beautiful in this late stage of winter barreness. They are dark, glossy malachite, stiff and imposing, imperially refusing to loosen their hold on the branches, in spite of sleet or snow or wind or rain. Dark, black-green. Not even especially attractive, but when the buds swell, large and robust even in infancy, clenched tight like tiny fists, and then when they suddenly rupture and over-spill their tight floret corsets, they become miraculous. The red - the true red - camellias, a red that I cannot adequately describe, the red of red cellophane enveloping red foil heartboxes on Valentine's Day, the red of shocking behaviour, the red of red dresses and outbursts of passion, these red camellias, encamped in the malachite forests, glow. They glow. There is no other way to describe them, and I take a different path home to pass them, to slow and to stare and to wonder at them.