Wildflowers and Life

I like my flowers the way I like my people . . . REAL.

There’s something about a rose – big and beautiful – but outside of a man’s arms at my door – I don’t love them.  They feel . . .artificial.  Just too much.  Too full, too colorful, too much beautiful scent.

Give me a field of alpine flowers any day.   They are reedy, a little stringy and hardy.  I love that about them.  You find them growing in almost no soil at all.  I am awed a little bit when I happen upon a single bloom in the crack of a giant rock face.  In general, they don’t seem to have the energy to have much smell.

Those high country blooms just seem so happy to be there – that small, determined burst of color.  Among the myriad of shades of green of the forest and meadows – there they are.  That determination – to just be.  Briefly but fully, they are exactly who they are.  It’s made me love them since I was a small girl.

My uncle made me a flower press when I was in grade school.  Up to that point our big family dictionary had limited my ability to press and preserve them.  I loved that flower press.  I could put the flower and leaves in it.  Wait about 4 weeks and have semi-permanent versions of the beauty I found in the mountains. 

My Dad bought a book about alpine flowers of Colorado for me.  It was so much fun to wander around, alone, as a youngster – gathering and learning about them.  Growing up that way was an amazing gift.

My friend says the bush outside my front door needs trimming.  I have trimmed it . . . some.  Somehow though, I will never get over the beauty of the chaos of nature.