“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.”
― Georgia O’Keefe
Yesterday a friend gave me yellow tulips. Thanks Anna. Resting on my kitchen table was an eight-day-old bouquet curling, turning brown, and dropping petals.
I just had to photograph them. Damn, I find decay so tragically beautiful and mysterious. You might get tired of my fading flora images, I’ll be posting many more in the near future.
This bouquet from a friend was so lovely when she dropped it off ten days ago or so. I have to admit something that perhaps won’t surprise you. I actually enjoy flowers even more when they start to turn a tiny bit brown, curl on the edges and drop a few pedals.
I know many of you won’t understand this, that’s OK. I promise I won’t send you a decaying bouquet. Although one time, while a student at the University of Wyoming a boyfriend in South Dakota sent me a red rose in the mail. It was almost black, shriveled and curled when it arrived. I still found it oddly beautiful.
When I no longer have to trim the stems of a bouquet, check the water or pinch the drooping leaves, I feel some odd sense of relief. The flowers, no longer expected to be perfect, are free to naturally fade and droop. And I get to enjoy the inevitable state of fading beauty, often leaving the pedals wherever they fall.
