Sweet Floral Magic

I wrote this article in late 1999, for an organic farming publication. I was playing around on the internet tonight, googling my own name like the egomaniac I am, and found it had been archived in several university libraries. This was written when I had yet one dog and two cats, and was still renting the second floor of that old rundown house. I had not had the breakdown that struck me like lightning and changed me so dramatically in 2002. I had not met and become involved with the Vampyr. I don't think I could write an article like this anymore.


Flowers feed the spirit. They bring us home. They are ciphers proclaiming the primacy of life. And they want us to smile—at them. (They do!) Because they are smiling at us, smiling and beaming bright tones of hope and of life. Smiling and saying, “Rest your mind on me a minute, and be glad.”

For 10 years I farmed, living amidst flowers (such beauties!) I’d planted, or who had lived there first, or who had invited themselves in. I learned another language gathering borage blossoms in the morning while honeybees droned contentedly beside me, or while watching butterflies dancing above the echinacea. I learned a secret the day I found a mouse’s cache of sunflower seeds nestled in the crook of a huge hairy leaf. Gold finches swaying on chicory stalks amidst constellations of Queen Ann’s lace was as divine a vision as I’d ever hoped to witness. Violets and trout lilies, asters and marsh marigolds, trillium and hepatica, nicotiana, tithonia, lavatera, rudbeckia, verbena, butterfly weed, these and so many others were sweet and happy friends.

And now I live in town, in a small old village that was settled in the mid-1600’s and burnt down and savaged twice during that strange dark time called the French and Indian War. It’s a village that sits directly on the western bank of the upper Hudson River and whose location once served as a major transportation center—a confluence of trails and waterways linking the Iroquois and Algonquin peoples meets here. And it’s living in this village, walking down streets lined with maples and oaks so venerable and huge, that I see impatiens and petunias in hanging baskets; portulaca in clay pots on wrought iron tables; morning glories twining up trellises beneath porch rails; fancy dahlias lining a walk; tiger lilies rounding the corner; zinnias half as tall as me flaming brilliant pink and orange along the sidewalk; foxglove peering between the slats of a fence; and scarlet geraniums in urns flanking a statue of the Virgin in a cobblestone grotto. Easygoing, friendly neighborhood varieties.

And then there’s the datura that volunteers in my neighbor’s garden. It’s a variety the likes of which I’ve never seen before, tall like Jimsonweed but many- branched as a moon lily, and its ivory white blossoms stink. Then when it blooms at moonrise, those tubular flowers shine lunar-luminescent and make me remember the wonder and the mystery of all plants who grow wherever the hell they want to. Like the pokeweed with its deeper-than-wine-dark berries clustered in cascading falls filling an abandoned greenhouse across from the Dutch Reformed Church. I figure I may not live on the land anymore, but the land is still right there under my feet, and while these tamed and chastened flowers, these wild and wily survivors may not
necessarily sing out in the strength of biodiversity, still they do sing. They sing and they whisper, they hum and they yell, and their song is a song of life’s magic.

Like over by Fish Creek where the dog and I walk every morning early to greet the new day’s light, there’s a little cove tucked in behind some oaks. And in that shady nook 100 yards or so up from the dam’s spillway, gleaming like the purest yellow
sunshine radiance, is a clump of 4 foot tall Japanese irises. How’d they get there?—so stately and exotic and elegant amidst the trash left by partying teens and people fishing who just don’t pick up after themselves. A little ways beyond are blue flags
opening up their own version of stubby stateliness to the sky. Just a few of them, enough to remind anyone who’d care to notice of this land’s wild antecedents, here at the edge of town.

Walking up the rise away from the creek, it’s easy to see agriculture’s imprint on the land, because to get back up to the road, you have to pass through pasture abloom with the subtle hues of red clover, vetch, birds foot trefoil, and goldenrod. These
aren’t very flashy plants. They don’t seem to try to catch my eye. Their purpose is not that they be noticed, necessarily. They are earnestly fixing nitrogen and attracting bees—not human admiration for their aesthetic charms (lovely as they all are
anyway). I get the sense they wouldn’t much care if I appreciated their beauty or not. They’re too busy. Unlike the
ornamentals of the neighborhood, so many of whom are prohibited by patent from propagating without a license. Their genetic heritage is copyrighted; their unique charms have a monetary value controlled by corporate entities far, far away from this little village. So what would these idle lovelies be busy with? They are specifically bred to be eye-catchingly beautiful. And so in order to fulfill their particular biological destinies, these ornamentals are hoping you’ll notice.


I noticed, one afternoon during the summer as I walked up to the school to pick up my daughter. A bright fuschia-pink geranium hanging along a porch rail winked and smiled down at me and I smiled back and in an instant of irrational insight I realized that was exactly what the bright blossoms wanted of me—that I lighten up and smile back. I told my daughter this as we walked back home; it was no news to her.

These town flowers (like the town crows who let me get up close and listen to them talk about how great it feels to fly) are used to being around all us people with our comings and goings and busy preoccupations. And they do want us to open up and smile at their loveliness. Even seemingly haughty cleome, with her hairy sticky stems and her hard to recognize face amongst her petals, sways in satisfaction when her beauty gives us pause, penetrates our preoccupation, and we stand enraptured by her loveliness, seeing for a moment...only her.

Flowers make magic. It is as if they are messengers from the strange and wondrous faerie realm that hopes to hear our voices breaking into twinkling laughter, into sighs of wonder— wonder at the vision of them, our eyes crinkling in the momentary
abandon of delight. Flowers are emissaries of light and loveliness, and, please, not merely the sex organs of plants. But then, genitals are doorways, mysterious portals of life’s encompassing power and majesty, of life’s hope and powerful triumph over
death and despair.

I work in an office now, and some days I am so engrossed in my work I forget there even is an outside, much less go out in it. So the flowers I see there, for the most part, are fine thoroughbreds shipped thousands of miles from hothouses in different continents and time zones, sent to deliver messages of love. White tulips in January, arrayed with neon bright heather in a clear glass vase— looking very much like inspiration for a still life painting. Exotic giant daisies whose names I didn’t catch, with deep brown velvet eyes and petals of burnt sienna atop 3 foot stems thick as corn stalks. And how all of us in that workplace sigh and fawn and ooh and ahh over the sight, the presence, of these delicate lovelies in our midst. The only other
natural phenomenon that can set us off so are the infants of some of our clients, sweet bright babies with the cosmos still swirling in their wise, dark eyes. We smile at them and when they smile back, our hearts flow over with the soft heat of happiness. How like flowers, these babies—so delicate, so true, such palpable reminders of life’s determined gentle
joy. How like babies, these flowers—faces bright with trust and hope. Both beckon us to soften, to stay still a moment and recognize the sweet magic and the quiet joy everywhere all around us, suffusing every moment with its peace—no matter where we are.