With the gut-wrenching stories in the news this week, I must admit that a theme for this week’s post escaped me. I had various ideas, I scanned through my images from the past month or two, but my heart wasn’t in it.

In the end, I decided that what I could offer was something that lifted my own spirits and was a feast for the eyes. I feel incredibly fortunate to be working with a talented floral artist at the moment, so I pulled out some images from a recent shoot and decided to create a garden for my post this week.

I recently came across an essay called “How Flowers Changed the World” (Loren Eiseley, 1957). In it he mentions that flowers did not exist on our planet one hundred million years ago, and that when they did explode into being, they changed the face of the planet.  He quotes an English poet named Francis Thompson who wrote in his poem “The Mistress of Vision”:

Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling of a star.

Eiseley took this quote to mean that life in all its forms is woven together and can influence or change other life forms — this resonated deeply with me.

So in these troubled days, I am focusing on life, beauty and love instead of the alternative.  Images of flowers might not change the world, but perhaps they can help shift our perspective.  Works for me.

cheers,
kim