A contemplative observation on flowers and their beauty. However, to the transcience I would add resilience. It amazes me how flowers come to places from which they’ve been excluded, if given half a chance. I find them boldly blooming in hair-pin cracks in pavements or walls, or a fissure in a slab of concrete.

And we’ve enjoyed watching them quietly encroach, year by year, in both spread and variety, on our untreated lawn.  It began as something approximating a standard chemically-controlled green sward, but having decided to leave it to its own devices, the growing diversity has brought us great pleasure.

And now, one by one, I am getting to know them by name.

Let’s ease up on the heel grinding and carpet bombing, let them strut their stuff and incidentally keep our bees and butterflies alive.

‘Flowers have always been an emblem of transience, but at this moment in history that is true in a broader and more painful sense than ever before.  When I contemplate beauty of this kind, carved or real, its poignant loveliness seems to harden into something like an accusation.  I can never quite forget that this is the world we are grinding under our heel.’ 

See also our quote-rich celebration of David Esterly’s magnificent book, The Lost Carving.

Source: David Esterly, The Lost Carving: A Journey to the heart of making (New York: Penguin, 2013), p. 23

Photo credit: birgl and Myriams-Fotos at pixabay