Since ancient times, the Lotus has been the sacred flower of the ancient Egyptians, a symbol of beauty, purity, and aspiration for the sun and light. This image permeates all Egyptian art, from the lotus-shaped capitals of temple columns to miniature toilet vessels and jewelry. In Ancient Egypt, the image of the lotus was associated with creation, birth, and the Sun as the source of life. This great flower blossomed, rising from the depths of the primordial waters, and carried on its petals existence, embodied in the image of the solar deity, the golden baby: the sun god Ra is born from the lotus. The rising Sun was also often represented as Horus, who rises from the lotus, personifying the Universe. The lotus flower could serve as the throne of Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys.
The beauty and grace of the lotus flower was also reflected in the culture of many other peoples.
In our region, the lotus is not so well known, because it is very thermophilic, and grows in more southern regions: along the shores of the Caspian Sea in the Volga delta and the mouth of the Kura, in the south of the Far East and in the Kuban estuaries, on the eastern coast of the Azov Sea.
But not so long ago, a plantation of large bright pink flowers appeared on the pond in which summer residents of one of the gardening associations in the Semiluki district of the Voronezh region swim. Exotic for our region, and for Russia as a whole, lotuses appeared here thanks to local pensioners - Nikolai Pavlovich and Svetlana Aleksandrovna Budarin, who took the risk of planting flowers here.
Nikolai Pavlovich brought lotus seeds from the Far East and threw them into the pond in October 2011. But the plants sprouted only 4 years later, when the Budarins had already stopped waiting and hoping. In the summer of 2015, a neighbor told us that strange leaves had appeared on the pond, - Natalya recalls. - Among the water lilies, whose leaves are shaped like hearts, leaves in the form of plates appeared. We ran to the pond and saw lotus leaves!
A few years later, in 2016, residents of the summer cottage village saw large bright pink buds on the pond for the first time. About two dozen of them blossomed on the reservoir at once. Since then, flowers have blossomed in the pond every year.