The Floral Dispatch #4: An ode to flowers
"Plant your own gardens and decorate your soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers." -Jorge Luis Borges
Sweet flower lover,
The whole of October, we’ve been reminded of how universal the love and tenderness we feel for flowers is, both individually and collectively. Here’s a glimpse of some of the #hoovutober artworks created by the Hoovu Finds community:
A Visit to the Kolkata Flower Market
Glimpses of the most beautiful visit to Calcutta’s famous Mallick Ghat Flower Market by the Hooghly River with Ma 🌼❤️💐🙆🏻♀️ I’m still intoxicated by the sights, scents and sounds all around. A must-visit to any flower lovers visiting the City of Joy. 🌺
Poems with flowers in them
1. Poem (below) and Artwork (above) by Niharika Kapil
“We're volcanoes
holding within us
the unbearable impatience
We're volcanoes
erupting chaos that can burn us
But we're volcanoes of not the usual kind
We're volcanoes
That can metamorphose
A chaotic mess into a beautiful one…”
2. Love Letter to Vincent by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (Excerpt)
Oh Vincent,
There is in my heart
a small yellow room
with a small wooden table
with a dull yellow cloth
and a rounded clay vase
with your name scrawled in blue,
and it’s bursting with sunflowers,
all of them open, all of them turning,
turning toward the light,
which is to say the flowers face every which way.
There is light everywhere we dare to turn.
Consider this a love letter, Vincent,
a letter sent back in time,
a letter that impossibly arrives
just when you despair,
just when you believe no one cares about your art,
the letter that reaches you to say you are loved
in that exact moment you feel unlovable.
Let this be the letter in which you see
the sunflowers you sowed a hundred thirty years ago
have re-seeded themselves in me
and now grow rampant in my days,
golden petalled and flagrantly lovely.
And your stars, swirling, your wheat fields goldening,
your cypress reaching, your church bells unsinging,
you will find them all my words.
This is how love replants itself—
more love, old friend, more love.
Read the full poem here.
3. Poem for a 75th Birthday by Marilyn L. Taylor
(Read this beauty on Riya’s lovely newsletter The Nook)
Love of my life, it's nearly evening
and here you still are, slow-dancing
in your garden, folding and unfolding
like an enormous grasshopper in the waning
sun. Somehow you've turned our rectangle
of clammy clay into Southern California,
where lilacs and morning-glories mingle
with larkspur, ladyfern and zinnia—
all of them a little drunk on thundershowers
and the broth of newly fallen flowers. I can't get over how the brightest blooms
seem to come reaching for your hand,
weaving their way across the loom
of your fingers, bending
toward the trellis of your body.
They sway on their skinny stems
like a gang of super-models
making fabulous displays of their dumb
and utter gratitude, as if they knew
they'd be birdseed if it weren't for you.And yet they haven't got the slightest clue
about the future, they behave as if
you'll be there for them always, as if you
were the sun itself, brilliant enough
to keep them in the pink, or gold, or green
forever. Understandable, I decide
as I look at you out there—as I lean
in your direction, absolutely satisfied
that summer afternoon is all
there is, and night will never fall.
Floral Art for the Soul 🌼
Absolutely smitten by Shreya Parasrampuria’s painted and embroidered interpretation of the Flower Men photo series by Ken Hermann:
Taking some inspiration from Andy Warhol on this gorgeous Sunday to notice the flowers around us + The Story Behind Andy Warhol's Flowers
Flower Spotting in Devi Seetharam’s gorgeous paintings:
Found these beautiful1964 Vietnamese stamps from an illustrated series on seasonal flowers:
What we’re reading
Subscribe: A Handmade Garden by Lorene Edwards Forkner featuring her garden paintings, meandering and musings on life in and out of the garden. Can’t wait to read Jo’s book The Gardener’s Palette: Creating Colour Harmony in the Garden.
Subscribe: The Earthworm, a newsletter for gardeners, growers, plant lovers and nature nerds by Dan Masoliver. We really enjoyed Dan’s interview with forager and natural dye artist Rebecca Desnos, where she said:
“Foraging gives every walk a new purpose. It’s not just a walk down the road, it’s like: “What might I see today?” Everything took on a new meaning. And I think when you slow down, and stop, and look at things, it makes life more enjoyable.”
-Rebecca Desnos“The voluptuous beauty and hypnotic fragrance of India’s flora has enraptured millions since eternity. From the sensual and wicked Desi Gulab to the musky and racy Genda and the luminous and dreamy Raat ki Rani to the spicy and audacious Neroli, India’s scents whether indigenous to it or a welcomed visitor, has enthralled and arrested human senses.”
-Excited to know more about this project by ART-CHIVES (@artchivesindia)WANT: Cassie Winslow’s cookbook Floral Provisions, featuring recipes that incorporate edible flowers
Floral Dye Notes by fiber artist Laura Berkowitz Gilbert (@toccostudio)
That’s all fleur now! (I’m learning French at the moment and felt like inserting some floral humour into this newsletter. Fleurgive me. 😛)
Sending fresh floral energy your way this November,
Rohini