F: Five Flowers

   
        This evening, while walking the puppies, I was assailed by the incredibly sweet and memorable fragrance of the jasmine flower.  Under any circumstances I would have breathed that scent in with great gusto but this evening the fragrance from the jasmine took me back instantly to evening spring classes in college.  Oh my!  I was immediately transported to that time and place and let's just say that being there was a good thing.  Those grad school days go down as some of the best in my life so the jasmine fragrance was welcome.  I wish I had a way to link you to that actual fragrance.   I wish I could breathe it in right now and feel the contentment and excitement that was mine in my late 20's.  But I don't know how to do that.

 

      What I do know is that flowers are one of my personal wonders of the world.  Flowers can draw me in not only with their fragrance but with their magical colors, bold statements, and, oddly enough, their simplicity.  About ten years ago, I decided that having fresh flowers in my home was important to me and, in no way, a waste of money.  I always have a bouquet from the yard or a bunch of flowers from Trader Joe's or the farmers' market.  I want that fresh color, that glance of beauty in a world gone, quite often, quite ugly.  I also find myself stopped in my tracks when out biking or walking, stopped by some piece of incredible beauty.  I pull out my camera and take photos becasue I so desperately want to capture that beauty.  My gift to you today is five of my favorite flower photos.  I hope you love them as much as I do.

Okay, so I couldn't stop at just five.  What was I supposed to do?  Every flower photo in my collection was shouting at me, "Choose me!  Choose me!"  

For Mama

  My mother recently moved for the winter to an apartment in town. It's a lovely one bedroom in a quiet area and all things are perfect.  Except that the walls are bare.  Now, I am not sure my mother really minds the bare walls.  She fills her days with jigsaw puzzles, computer work, reading, crossword puzzles and all sorts of communication and mentally engaging activities.  But that was the first thing I noticed when I went to help her unpack. The walls were empty.

The next time I went up to see her, I brought her one of my paintings.  It was bright, colorful and abstract.  Very abstract.

     My mother is wonderful.  She wants to support her kids in whatever their pursuits are.  She has listened to more fledgling musicians, has read more original poetry and/or other written pieces, has ooh-ed and aw-ed more homemade gifts and sewing project than you can shake a stick at.  So, when I brought her my abstract brightness, she tried.  She really did. But I am no dummy. I could see by her questioning face that she wasn't really sure WHAT this was I had painted.  And knowing WHAT it was seemed important.  So, I very quickly said something along the lines of, "Oh, wait, I have a better idea.  How about I bring several up and you can choose the one that YOU like.  I brought this one because I like it a lot and it is bright and sunny but I can bring several and you can choose."  Her smile and laugh while nodding her head confirmed that this was probably the right idea.

    Okay, so here's the problem.  My paintings don't come out of realism.  I didn't have any that I could take up to her.  I decided that I would have to do my best and create something she could read.  My mother has always had a flower garden. I decided that I would give flowers a go.  I loved playing with backgrounds and the colors and trying some different combinations.  What you see below are the four finalists.  Remember, the photos cannot show the real painting.  You cannot see the fine points nor the texture.  The lighting is not the best either.  Paintings are always so much more alive in person.

    When I told her I would bring some paintings back, Mama said, "Oh, don't paint just for me.  That wouldn't be right.  Paint what YOU want to paint.  It's not the same if you paint something that you are trying to paint for me.  You have to paint what you want to paint."  I got what she was saying but I think I proved her wrong.  I painted something that she might like yet I still had fun.  They are not my favorite of all time paintings, for sure, but they were fun to paint.  It was sweet to paint with Mama in mind and to still play with colors and textures.  I would have gone more abstracty but I wanted her to like them too.   Do you think she will?



Oh, and just for fun, I am including this one because , oh I don't know, I like it?

Details

    I considered taking on The  River Writing Challenge.  The challenge there is to look at the details and then write about them.  I wanted to commit to it but decided I was crazy to do that.  Knowing me, I would forget that it was all in fun and it would become another stressor on my daily "to do" list. Not a bad thing this week but, potentially, a self defeating thing next week.

      BUT...... on that silly list of 50 things to do in 2012, there is the one that has to do with seeing the colors and noticing the details so I am just going to do that.  For example , yesterday I pruned back the roses.  This is a job that I assumed a few years ago and actually kind of enjoy doing.  I don't know what I am doing.  I don't have any knowledge of roses (except that they are pretty).  I do know that they thrive if they are pruned back in winter.  So I get out there sometime in late December or early January and prune away.

   
      We have had some cold mornings this week but, by early afternoon, the temperature has been getting mild enough for yard work.   Yesterday, I headed out to the front yard (in my plaid flannel pj pants and dark blue sweatshirt), dragging a yard waste can and carrying small pruning shears and a glass of iced tea.  Yup, you read that correctly, iced tea.  The first thing that got me attention was those lousy thorns.  The little pointy ones can be just as nasty as the big incisor ones.  But the other thing I noticed was the color of the rose bush stem.  Who would have thought that it would be this lovely shade of red/maroon/deep pink?  But check out those thorns!






       
I went down the front sidewalk, pruning and trimming as if I knew what I were doing.  The roses can be spectacularly beautiful when they first flame out in May.  The retaining wall becomes a wall of red roses along the sidewalk and they just sing the praises of spring.  I was pleasantly surprised to notice among the bare branches and the thorns that there were still a few clusters of lonely summer roses, holding on, hoping to brighten the world for just a while longer.  But chop, chop, they went to pieces.

      Because, you see, there were a lot more of these leftover roses than there were of the summer survivors..  Tinged with fallish brown, broken leaves, speckled yellow and general winter drudge, they do not make me smile.  They make me miss the summer season long gone.  Funny thing is though, I can also look ahead and say, "Hey, May!  Come on over!"   Really, she will be here in five months. The wall of roses will be adored by passersby and I have the perfect view from my studio window.

      And then, mixed in with the leftovers of fall's frosts, I found a couple of pockets of winter beauty.  Look at this tangle of garden detritus.  I don't know what the swirly stuff is except that it appears to be a delicate dancer, gracefully leaping off the rose bush and spinning seductfively around and into the fallen leaves.  Old Man Winter does have his finer points, especially when he lets the delicate side show.  The gold and the brown suggest the richness that can be winter if I only look at the details.