Monday's Inspiration: O! The Wildflower Factory

Apparently I took massive amounts of photos of wildflowers in Aspen. Sorting through them, it reminded me of the chapter on The Tulip in Michael Pollen's Botany of Desire so I took it out again and reread the chapter...so very interesting and inspiring...je vous recommande:



"Through their colors and symmetries, through these most elemental principles of beauty (that is, contrast and pattern), flowers alert other species to their presence and significance. Walk among them, and you see faces turned toward you (though not only you) beckoning, greeting, informing, promising, meaning."
-Michael Pollen, Botany of Desire









The flowers in the mountains of Colorado were so abundant there was no choice but to take little portraits of each and every one that crossed my path. It really was, as Pollen suggests, "much like the quickening one feels whenever an object of desire is spotted in the landscape"*...I loved what I saw there in a very primal way, love that gives thanks and protection and gets tongue-tied and a little embarrassed.




I loved how certain colors stuck together (red with white, purple with yellow), loved the vibrant carpet of flowers sunning in open fields, clinging brilliantly to the sides of paths, popping up alone next to rocks. Loved the quiet weird little speckled numbers in the shade, the demure little hanging bells, the ones that made you hunker down under them, the little sad-sacks that had lost all its petals to wind and rain, the striking Indian Paintbrush in delicious competing shades from apricot to tomato, scarlet, and grape.

I loved recognizing the ones that conned their way into those Victorian botanist's paper bags and made their way into our gardens, miles and miles and eons away...violets and pansies and irises...way to go wildflowers! Way to inspire us to help you progenerate!~

* from The Botany of Desire