Location: Mayfield House and Nature Preserve
Date & Time: March 25, 2015 – 1:30 pm
Temperature: 75º Sunny
Occasion: PERSIAN NEW YEAR!!
(Sabzeh) You grow seeds and then you place the plant in moving water for good luck)
March is a very special month for Iranians.
Not only is it the first day of Spring – it is also the month of the New Year!
With every tradition, there are fundamental elements to fulfill the customs.
The first day of Spring this year was March 20, 2015.
Which is also the Persian New Year. The new year is always the first day of Spring.
Being Iranian, this is and has always been a very important celebration in my family.
Having moved out of my parents house in Lake Travis, I decided to carry on the tradition from my home:
Persian New Year Custom Ritual/ Setup (called: Eide Norooz)
The symbolic dishes consist of:
- Sabzeh or sprouts, usually wheat or lentil representing rebirth.
- Samanu is a pudding in which common wheat sprouts are transformed and given new life as a sweet, creamy pudding and represents the ultimate sophistication of Persian cooking.
- Seeb means apple and represents health and beauty.
- Senjed the sweet, dry fruit of the Lotus tree, represents love. It has been said that when lotus tree is in full bloom, its fragrance and its fruit make people fall in love and become oblivious to all else.
- Seer which is garlic in Persian, represents medicine.
- Somaq sumac berries, represent the color of sunrise; with the appearance of the sun Good conquers Evil.
- Serkeh or vinegar, represents age and patience.
(I brought Brynlin with me to throw two Sabzehs out into Mayfield Parks river. She was a great sport about it and it was so fun for me to show her a very important part in my culture’s tradition).
As we were observing for our blog – we noticed these beautiful purple/white flowers that bloomed the beginning of March. How beautiful. Something I have never seen at Mayfield since I’ve been blogging in January. These smelt fresh and sweet but we left them alone and carried on our path.
Being in nature during this holiday was very emotional for me. I’ve reached the age where I have to do these traditions on my own when i’m not with my parents and that’s a hard reality to swallow.
But just being outside in a comfortable location like Mayfield, everything seemed in order.
I had a purpose. I was fulfilling the purpose.
“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” -Aldo Leopold