Flowers have always been more or less OK with me, nothing special, just dots of color and something I could take or leave. I’ve generally been indifferent to cut flowers in a vase and while I’ve bought quite a few red roses and colorful bouquets for a certain person, I’ve sensed the symbolism, not the flowers themselves.
Over the years we’ve planted everything from A to Z of the flower world and I suppose I enjoyed the color but the important part of a garden was the maintenance tasks of weeding and watering, not the flowers themselves.
There are several things relating to flowers I should mention. I like to decorate with tall, elegant vases but there’s no need to mess with their design by including flowers. While I prefer furniture making, on occasion I’ve carved leaves and flowers as decorative objects. And, I’ve probably painted a dozen or more canvases with flowers as the focus point of the painting. I usually buy two or three sunflowers to use as props but mostly I create the flowers from a mental image as I work the paint.
This spring something different happened to me concerning flowers, specifically tulip flowers. Last fall we planted about forty tulip bulbs. For unknown reasons I developed anticipatory feelings for the bulbs/flowers. When spring humped itself into reality I actually monitored the ground, waiting for the first tulip shoots to appear.
I enjoyed watching the tulips progress and was eager to see the blooms. In an odd fashion, I reconnected with nature - and I’ve always been a Greenpeace-Sierra Club-John Muir-Colin Fletcher-Ansel Adams kind of guy - by simply observing the arc of a tulip’s moment in time.
While the bud stage and the full flower glamour stage of the tulips are commonly thought to be the highlights, I found the last stages of the flowers to be it’s most majestic moment.
There was something magical about the flowers, stems dipping downward as it aged, as the petals curled and faded away ... that was, to me, a powerful signature of beauty, grace and returning to the earth.
I suspect we will plant more tulips this coming fall.
Over the years we’ve planted everything from A to Z of the flower world and I suppose I enjoyed the color but the important part of a garden was the maintenance tasks of weeding and watering, not the flowers themselves.
There are several things relating to flowers I should mention. I like to decorate with tall, elegant vases but there’s no need to mess with their design by including flowers. While I prefer furniture making, on occasion I’ve carved leaves and flowers as decorative objects. And, I’ve probably painted a dozen or more canvases with flowers as the focus point of the painting. I usually buy two or three sunflowers to use as props but mostly I create the flowers from a mental image as I work the paint.
This spring something different happened to me concerning flowers, specifically tulip flowers. Last fall we planted about forty tulip bulbs. For unknown reasons I developed anticipatory feelings for the bulbs/flowers. When spring humped itself into reality I actually monitored the ground, waiting for the first tulip shoots to appear.
I enjoyed watching the tulips progress and was eager to see the blooms. In an odd fashion, I reconnected with nature - and I’ve always been a Greenpeace-Sierra Club-John Muir-Colin Fletcher-Ansel Adams kind of guy - by simply observing the arc of a tulip’s moment in time.
While the bud stage and the full flower glamour stage of the tulips are commonly thought to be the highlights, I found the last stages of the flowers to be it’s most majestic moment.
There was something magical about the flowers, stems dipping downward as it aged, as the petals curled and faded away ... that was, to me, a powerful signature of beauty, grace and returning to the earth.
I suspect we will plant more tulips this coming fall.
