The Defiance of Magnolias

I had a post scheduled for today, on the topic of winter salads. I have, I hope - if technology didn’t get the better of me - delayed its publication until next week. Should it appear today despite my best efforts, please forgive me. With a war raging a mere 1328 miles from me (the distance from Lucca to Kyiv in the Ukraine), salad just doesn’t seem all that important. I have other things on my mind.

Yesterday morning I went for a long walk to try to wrap my head around the idea of a war that seems at once so close and yet so far away. It was a cold and windy morning here in Lucca, so I wrapped up in scarf, gloves and hat and headed toward Corso Garibaldi. There I hoped I might find a few trees in the early stages of bloom to provide some beauty in a world that seems suddenly very, very dark.

Sure enough, the trees along Corso Garibaldi (Lucca’s own Magnolia Street) are beginning to flower. Most have a few buds or a few barely opened white or pale pink magnolia blossoms. But there was one tree midway along the street that was in glorious full bloom, full of deep pink blossoms. It seemed to say “damn the winter, I declare it to be spring”. Its beauty was unmistakable, almost defiant.

I know that magnolias are also in bloom in Kyiv right now. I hope a few stand in defiant bloom though I fear that many are toppled, broken, and stripped of their beautiful blossoms by the violence of war. As people flee the city, in the lingering cold of winter and with what little they can carry, I doubt that magnolia blooms are something they notice. Gentle, quiet beauty can hardly compete with the ugliness of war. I can only hope that peace and sanity will win and that, when they do, some defiant magnolias will still be standing to welcome the Ukrainian people home.