We are a desperate people. It is April and we are being threatened by yet another winter storm. Perhaps as much as 7-12 inches of snow is to fall throughout Minnesota beginning in the next couple of hours. Most people are walking around now with a look of dread on their faces, bundled up in the same hues of gray, brown and black they’ve been wearing for the last eight months, with only a Christmas red and a hint of Easter pink thrown in to raise our spirits. Because Easter was so early this year, many organizations planned a host of April events. You could conceivably do more than one interesting and inspiring experience every day for the next few weeks. We have looked forward to these harbingers of spring, of change. And now we may have to dig out to get to them. Will it be worth it one wonders? Or shall we just stay at home, put another log on the fire, throw on our pajamas and wait it out. All that remains to be seen.

While some have decided to stay close to the home fires, hundreds are streaming to the Como Conservatory. They are are roaming around among the ferns, watching the goldfish swim in clean, clear, unfrozen water, allowing the humidity to feed the scales that have been masquerading as their skin. I’ve just been there. I watched as people opened the doors to the main room that is always planted with the flowers of the season. Flannel-ed humans, still wearing their down coats and wool hats, stood like alien beings among the brilliance of blue hydrangeas,orange lilies,yellow daffodils, and purple hyacinths. Pasty white faces bent to smell the sweet fragrance of something other than stale, pent up air. It was a glorious sight to behold.

But for most of us this beauty was only the sideshow of what we really had come to see: The Corpse Flower. This amazing flower, standing a little less than two feet tall, planted in a terracotta pot that could house three small children comfortably stood in a small wing to the side of the main rooms. A line snaked out the door as we all silently waited to view its blossom that only unfolds every fifteen years. It seemed a solemn, humble act of waiting to view this plant known for giving off the smell of rotting flesh. It was an amazing gathering of humanity…old and young, children hoisted on the shoulders of parents, young people taking pictures with their cell phones, all of us reaching our noses to get a whiff. The plant and leaves have the green and burgundy color of a variegated coleus and as my eyes traveled from the top of the plant down toward the floor, I noticed that the pot itself was wrapped royally with a lush piece of brown velvet. It seemed fitting.

As people turned to leave this tiny room, having seen and smelled this flower which will not bloom again until 2023, smiles were on nearly every face. We had indeed seen something special, something elusive, something that we may never have the opportunity to view again. It’s difficult to know what to make of the kind of joy that could be found in seeing such a sight, smelling such an odor. The Corpse Flower.

As I said…..we are a desperate people.