"Om! Mani padme hum!"-- ("O! the jewel in the lotus-flower!")
For a more serious article about how to grow water lotus, click here.
Do you listen to your lotus? Or do you eat them -- remember the lotus eaters? If not, you might want to try it out
Either way, watching them is kinda fun -- especially if yours is precarious enough to remind you of the
My lotus (have you taken my short garden tour -- see it here!) resides in a large black plastic nursery pot floating in the middle of a large round galvanized stock tank. Hardly an upscale milieu for such an elegant plant, although it is in the center of a flat and open roughly circular mowed area (I can't call it a lawn) with nearly elegant proportions; this is bordered to the north and east by the big woods, to the south by an arc of "Sugar Tyme" crab apple trees, and to the west by a large native ash.
The tub-full of four foot tall lotus is literally floating in the fish pond; the stock tank became a fish pond when we stocked it with fancy goldfish to keep down the mosquitoes. The water ripples in the breeze and is quite decorative all by itself, but without a fountain or water lilies it seemed a bit drab. Hence it became the designated spot for the long-coveted water lotus.
The lotus does float, although at first double-take I thought it had levitated. (I associate levitation with Tibet in a distant sort of way, and lotus don't even grow in Tibet -- but they do figure there strongly: Tibetan Lotus.) It spins and bobs like the old three men in a tub of nursery rhyme fame unless it is "stuck" in which case it hugs the galvanized side of the pond, hovering and wobbling like a barely beached sailboat.
When the weather is dry, I top up the lotus pot with fresh well water pre-warmed in the sun, but it still floats. It gyrates faster or slower, depending on the weather. At first I was non-plussed by this phenomenon but after a while I grew to appreciate the special dimension full freedom of movement adds to the lotus.
The lotus itself is a well-centered object of stately size and calming grace. From my upstairs office window view, the big lotus leaves look like inverted floppy green sun hats tippling in the breeze. When a rain shower stops and there are giant water droplets bulging on the leaves, I watch the gorgeous big cabochons gleam and twirl in the sunlight. The stems give and sway gently to the rhythm of the breeze, or they flip and whip in a wind while the seed pods bobble up and down like chicken necks.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Barbara M. Martin's Cottage Garden topic, please visit the Discussions page.