"The magnolia symbolizes sweetness, beauty, and love of nature.

Added by Swannie

Although it has no specific heraldic symbol, it has developed over time into a symbol of femininity, nobility, and perseverance."

A bit of (too) lyrical prose...

Magnolia -- she has been colouring most of my adult life. I started to note her on my long cycle journey's in Winter's cold and darkness, when the growing buds on her branches were among the first signs of approaching Spring. They were hope giving and warming on those moments of lonely freezing tiredness.
Ever since I would always look at any Magnolia with love and admiration.

Isn't she also beautiful enough for such feelings?

About fifteen years later, married and with three children by then, we got our first real house, with upstairs and downstairs and a front and rear garden. We couldn't be happier!

It was a house with a little added magic, for it's street was named Magnolialaan and you would never have seen another street so richly planted with Magnolia's, white and pink, trees and shrubs. And not only in the gardens, but the council had decorated the whole street along it's full length with Magnolia's. 

In Winter our street held the promise of Spring, with Magnolia's strong buds on naked dark branches telling so obvious of the season to come.

In Spring our street was worth a detour, with it's awesome abundantly white flowering Magnolia trees and it's pink flowered shrubs. Our street bathed in the sweet fresh scent of the blossom and smelled heavenly for a few weeks. 

I felt like living in one of the most special and blessed streets imaginable. And more so, as it almost seemed my special love for Magnolia's had brought about this little miracle in our lives. Nonsense of course, it was sheer luck or fate that brought us there, as in Holland there is very little to choose when you are in need of a house. You get an offer when it's your turn and you can not even say no, or you may have to wait for years more. At least that was the case in out area and in our financial position.

Three years ago we decided to migrate to London and Magnolia's lost their prominence in my life, sadly. You see them in gardens in our area, but they are spread out and often small, not attracting attention like the Magnolia's in our old street.

Still, if I feel a connection with any plant, it is the Magnolia. She came in my life when I started to discover myself and she sort of symbolizes my struggle for independence, my deep, longing and enduring search for my femininity and my perseverance not to give up, to keep searching and not to give in to depression and feelings of 'being no one'. 
I will not call myself noble, not at all actually, but femininity and perseverance, traits which the Magnolia would symbolize...well I'm happy that it are precisely those things she seems to stand for.

So, like my previous blog - started when we were still living on the Magnolialaan - was named Magnolia, let me subtitle this live-journal with that name too...



Magnolia quote and picture taken from: http://symbolism.wikia.com/wiki/Magnolia