APRIL: A Swiss Sakura

Swiss Miss
Apr 6, 2023
2 min read

My mother, now 86 years old is the gardener in the family. She can grow anything. And not just flowers. She was practical that way. Our house in the south of the Philippines was built on 3 plots of land. The house occupied half and the remaining half was teeming with 3 coconuts trees and fruit trees - guava, mango, avocado and wax apple. Underneath these trees are moringa, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, Malabar spinach, okra and eggplant. Only when the edibles are in did my mother allow herself the ornamental plants – the bougainvilleas, roses, hibiscus, plumerias and orchids.

Being in the tropics, I don’t remember flowers being a spring thing but more year round like the bougainvilleas that never seem to stop shedding blooms. I don’t remember seeing ornamental cherry trees either, although there’s a specie in Palawan Island which is becoming very popular throughout the archipelago. I looked it up and it has an amazing dark pink bud which opens into larger than usual white petals. It is stunning. A friend in Manila is planting it in her garden.

It must have been my first spring here when I passed Stauffacherplatz. The cherry blossoms that lined the tram station were in full bloom. There was a light spring breeze and the petals were falling. It looked like it was snowing! I was entranced.

Max’s violin lessons were a kilometer away in Saumstrasse. The cross street Bertastrasse and all the way to Idaplatz was lined with pink cherry blossoms. The trees looked like giant pink cotton candies. I felt like Clara in the Land of the Sweets! I had to resist the urge to skip.

Near Idaplatz and Wildbachstrasse

The cherry blossom called Sakura, is the national flower of Japan. The Japanese community here in Zürich do their Sakura picnic in Idaplatz. (photo 4) And year after year, around the end of March, I would drive to Idaplatz and walk underneath the cherry blossoms. Like the Japanese, I have taken the arrival of cherry blossoms to celebrate the end of winter.

During the 8-week Covid lockdown from mid-March in 2020, I drove there. Our borders were closed, work and schooling were from home and limited contact was enforced. I didn’t get out of the car, but I needed to see it. A pale pink ray of hope breathing new life, amid the great wave of death and dying in Europe.