LADY SLIPPER

One of my earliest memories with flowers was finding a sole lady slipper filled with light in the woods in our backyard. I knew magic when I saw it even at age five and my response was to pluck it. I bounded into our kitchen with the bloom cupped in my hands as a gift for my mother. Her response was a gasp and a stern scolding. I learned the New England dogma regarding the endangered orchid. I had plundered our Maine woods. Maybe it was my own dose of karma, but I hadn’t seen one of these flowers since that morning at age five until this June. My dear childhood friend took me on a trail behind her house. Every step you took you saw another dozen. I am still learning not to pluck all the things that are magnificent in this world. But to take the time even if you’re being malled by mosquitos to plunder with the eyes.

ODE TO THE WREATH

What is a wreath? An emblem of home, of hearth, of merriment. A circle; the primordial shape. A portal to the woods, to the over-grown alleys, to my mother-in-law’s garden. Wreaths are for the meanderers, who quicken at life gone-to-seed. Wreaths are for those that don’t see bracken as browned and brittle but it’s dried curves as the meridian of their final dance. Wreaths are a final dance. I have been weaving bits of botanicals together this season in this form almost daily. I let the materials tell me how they want to move and let them hold themselves together. I have shed wire, glue, and rings in this work. A reminder that all we ever need is our natural world…