Flowers & Those Who Love Them
If flowers are frivolous then we’re all at least a little bit foolish.
“They’re so overrated,” I remember a few friends of mine saying throughout the years — in high school it was a comment on a bouquet given as a sign of love, in college a remark on someone’s high achievements.
I never thought the same, and this summer I had a chance to think a little bit more about the joy I’ve found in flowers, in different stages of my life and from those who’ve shaped my worldview.
Long before we cut them from their stems, flowers have played a major role in lighting up the tree of life. When timed well and not too early, the flowering of a plant secures its ability to reproduce and help its species survive. With their many shapes, the flowers, buds, and blossoms of a plant foster its pollination and seed dispersal, helping themselves and many others along the way.
Though the function of flowers is most often fertilization, their varying displays have rightly captured the attention of our kind. Ancient Egyptians used flower arrangements for decorating the home and honoring the dead, the Greeks used them to decorate themselves, and the Chinese used basket arrangements for symbolic meaning. They’ve inspired such movements in creative arts, relational pursuits, and scientific study. Even Charles Darwin’s contributions to ecology and evolutionary biology can be attributed to his love of flowers, and the large body of work done in his later years inspired the field of plant reproductive biology; he says “I do not think anything in my scientific life has given me so much satisfaction as making out the meaning of the structure of these plants.”
I don’t need anyone to bring me flowers (though I would never object), and I quite enjoy gathering them on my own: a few picked along an afternoon hike or a bunch bought from the farmers market. But the best are from a garden, where time was spent to raise the stems from seed.
“Start a garden” said physicist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva at a recent online program on how each of us can start making changes for a better world. There’s nothing greater than connecting to the Earth to keep us grounded.
I love remembering how my world was shaped by a man who loved flowers. It was more than love, really, that my grandfather taught me about wildness and the natural world. Always either weeding his garden, filling his bird feeders, or sharing stories of what creatures made tracks in the woods behind his house, he was a steady force in our family and the ecosystems of northwestern Pennsylvania.
One morning, we watched a black bear sneak bites of bird feed from a buffet he’d left for the birds just the night before. I sat beside the large window of his living room and asked why he didn’t scare it away. “It’s all connected,” he said, “the health of that bear means just as much to the forest as the health of those birds.” The next day, and ever since, I couldn’t help but see how he was right. One wild thing — whether a bear, a bird, or a field of flowers — can’t make it on it’s own; these networks of interdependence, whether known to us or not, are vital to all life, especially those whose wellbeing relies on the health of our planet.
There often isn’t much I get to do that’s wild on a daily basis (as hard as I may try), but keeping flowers in my life can’t help but make me smile, and I see how they bring joy to those whose lives connect with mine.
Planting, growing, and picking flowers keeps us rooted in the present, but also reminds us that what has been will be again. More is yet to come; the storms roll in, the winds howl, the golden days of summer turn to golden leaves of fall, and winter brings the world to a pause. But come spring a flower blooms, and sometimes, we gather them to bring such light into our lives.
Much like the vagabond of a tarot deck, theirs is a sign of treasuring a moment, of new beginnings and a trust in what the future holds. Well, there it is: I’m a fool for flowers.
