Flowers are all about Experience

“Where the most beautiful wild flowers grow, there mans spirit is fed and poets grow.”
                                                                                       -Henry David Thoreau

Working with flowers all day we sometimes forget the magic they possess. It only takes a child‘s wonder to remind you.

Last week a neighbor handed down an outdated digital camera to our 6 year old. Immediately, we had to go on a photo safari across the neighborhood. I was happy to oblige and off we went, my son clicking away at whatever caught his eye.  I decided not to intervene with my expert advice and just see what we came back with…this was harder than it sounds!

A couple gigabytes later, we returned home and stuck the memory card in the computer. What happened next was truly surprising. Literally, 100 percent of the photos were of flowers. Not just big bloomed dahlias and poppies leaning out to the curb, but tiny flowers on a bush, which I’d never noticed, dandelions in a neighbor’s unkempt yard, little scruffy blooms on ornamental foliages;  nothing else seemed to captivate his attention.

We all start with this intrinsic fascination with flowers. It’s hard wired in to our being. The cyclic nature of cultural trends, leads to this attraction coming back into vogue again and again. Whether it was Thoreau and Emerson turning their backs on the conforming demands of society to find simplicity in nature, or hippies of the 60’s finding solace and peace in “flower power.” We are currently on the edge of a resurgence of this idea, as millennials push back on the disposable culture embraced by their parents and embrace the idea that experiences are more valuable than material possessions.

Flowers are all about the experience. Sure, they are doing a biological action to reproduce, but the flair with which they accomplish this act is truly amazing.  They draw you in and demand your attention.

Is anything on earth as universally loved and appreciated as flowers?

Perhaps this is why we share them in joy and in sorrow and why we cultivate them in our gardens and pick up an eye catching bouquet at the store.  This is why we name our children after them, hang paintings of them on our walls, and even use them as screen savers on our computers, and why when a child is given a camera and freedom, the first thing they photograph is a flower.

We all need the experience flowers give us.

*All photos taken by a six year old.