Hurrah for the orange bombs of joy

This spring has been a long time coming.

Here we are in the middle of November and after this week’s first few days of sunshine pouring like warm honey on the back of the neck, new life is exploding around us.

Which brings me to the subject of marigolds.

Or more precisely — the 15-megaton H-bomb burst of orange that has erupted in our flower garden over the past few weeks.

Experts use the Latinate label Calendula officinalis to describe these orange bombs. But that just sounds too dusty and dead, as if they were dried and pinned under a plastic film in a reference book. For me, the peasant poetry of Mary’s gold does a better job of capturing the liveliness of these little visitors, even if it’s not scientifically correct.

If I wasn’t so in love with their tenacity and shout of joy I would say we have five hundred little Donald Trumps in our backyard right now. But that uglifies a little thing of beauty, and words are more important than ever these days.

Let’s just say our marigolds are like 500 little sunrises.

But even that’s not right because sunrises are slow and soft — these flowers are fast and bold.

If they were people they would be Brazilian carnival dancers. Every morning they slap me in the face and dance across the flood-brown of my backyard screaming “Party time!”

Naturally, wherever you have performers and show-offs, you have their fans and followers. Bees and butterflies just adore marigolds. They fuss and flitter around them like teenagers in a mosh pit of colour.

Put simply, these little orange flowers bring me joy every morning, and I’ll be sorry to see them go.

Joy comes in all shapes and sizes, and what works for me may not work for you. But I suspect that as we grow older we all gravitate towards the same things when it comes to happiness.

Joy starts small, expands and then gets small again like a little universe. Babies love bright flowers, little shiny things and bouncing on knees. As I grew, bigger sensations brought me joy. The thrilling slap of air on a white winter morning after a fresh snowfall as I hurtled down the ice-covered hill outside our Welsh home on my mum’s stolen tea tray — that brought me a lot of joy and a few bruises when I was eight years old. There were no marigolds there, but there were hundreds of bluebells, which offered a quieter source of joy.

Later, it was possessions and money that made me smile — my first guitar, motorbike, car, job, house. Then it was accolades and love and babies and children and their achievements that brought joy. They still do.

Now, it’s back to flowers, which is good because they don’t cost much, they look after themselves and marigolds, like bluebells, return year after year.

In these troubling times of pandemic, floods, war and creeping climate change it’s good to know that moments of joy, however simple, continue.

I think it’s important to look for them every day.