Tag Archives: garden

Flowers NOT Flags

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Flowers not flags!

We (some of us) respond to flowers with awe, wonder, appreciation, and love.

Our response to flags is mixed and full of preconceived ideas and misguided ideologies. Flags indoctrinate us with feelings of pride, hate, and unresolved tension.

Flowers ask for nothing.

Flags are human designed combinations of graphics and colours forged to represent national belonging and pride. But, also serves to alienate and divide us when we are not part of that team.

Flowers are natural and evolve from life forces that humanity fails to understand. Their textures, colours, shapes, and constant changes are infinite in their variety and beauty. We pick them, paint pictures of them, take photos of them, and put them in a vase, and still they continue to fill us with awe.

My Instagram feed is full of flags and hate and military postering. And then I see a photo of beautiful flowers and it takes me away from the constant flow of hatred.

One IG video is of the military postering parade in China. Men needing power with lots of metal and bombs and soldiers in perfect obeyance.

My next video is of a bunch of colourful flowers held by a woman in France, offerings from her garden.

This contrast sits heavily on my psyche. What does this precious Earth need now? More bombs, or more flowers?

I know that “flower power” cannot save us. It failed in the 1960’s; lost in a haze of mind-destroying drugs.

My attention though is a valuable thing, and I ask myself who do I wish to give my attention to?

Perhaps these: @sharonsantoni, @foxandwhimsyflowerfarm, @the_ark_garden, @rachelle_kearns, @thornbernie, @isa.paige, and others.

Don’t even think about putting a flower on your flag, because I won’t follow it!

As I write this these are the flowers in my house, and Spring has arrived here on the Mornington Peninsula and the fragrant native freesias have sprouted.

Sitting in my mother’s garden

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My mother’s garden is sustaining me at the moment while staying over to keep my father company and help him as he fights his own battle with cancer. For four years he cared for my mother while she was in and out of chemotherapy, hospitals and various other treatments. He was at her side the whole time. Now he is burdened with the same demands: chemotherapy, doctor’s visits, and other treatments.

While I take my turn in the family care roster, I spend a lot of time in the garden. And it is a beautiful little garden. There is a pond with a fountain in the centre, and two gold fish live on despite neglect. A shady fernery. Another small bird bath lower in the garden. Roses, a lemon tree, various Australian native shrubs, and other small flowering shrubs. The veranda is sheltered from the weather and is a lovely spot to sit and watch the birds as they flit about. In the afternoons they plunge into the fountain, then alight on the rose arbour to shake themselves vigorously, before another plunge, shake and happy chirp.

I pick flowers and put them in a vase on the kitchen table as Mum would have done. She collected small ornamental elephants and also blue and white patterned crockery, so I place the little blue and white elephant beside the vase of flowers as a memento to her. And I sit in her house surrounded by her treasured things, while Dad sits in fortitude against the ensuing internal war.

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