Garden Invasion: Stalking the Flowers (Part II)

There are flowers with textures that resemble specialty papers–they looked like the tiniest drop of rain could tear them but they don’t;

Then there are those that looked like velvet;

There are those that look like artificial flowers.  You have to touch them to see if they are real;

By their looks, there are also tough ones;

There are those that resemble other creatures in their environment…such as insects;

There are those that seem to defy gravity in order to demonstrate daredevil acts;

Delicate.  Fragile.  In their lightness they seem to just float in the air.  But they have nerves of steel;

Others could smell bad and still radiate beauty.

Others are quite plain passersby tend to ignore them…

but when they spring to life, they will surprise you!  Astound you.

And then, there are those that simply radiate beauty inside and out.

But what amazes me more is the story of transcendence that flowers tell.

At one time it is just one small kernel that developed on a modified shoot from a determinate apical meristem.  Then, the petals unfold, the flower matures.  With maturation comes changes in color, shape, size.  Then, just when it is about to wither, fall and mingle with the soil to become an organic matter that fertilizes the same plant from whence it came, another kernel breaks out from the meristem.

Garden Invasion: Stalking the Flowers (Part I)

It rained excessively last December until mid January as if the skies poured water more than the volume it took away in months.  Originally, the plan was to spend my Christmas vacation seeing old friends, taking long walks and playing with my young cousins.  But the rain kept us marooned inside the house for two weeks.  It seemed like the cold and gray weather was a good prelude to boredom that there was a time when I felt I could practically write a discourse on the Anatomy of Boredom. Then, the sun broke from the horizon, parted the gloomy curtains and bathed my side of the world with colors.  My Mother came out to inspect the damages the rain wrought to her flowers; I followed and invaded their silence with my camera.

As it turned out, boredom is a great inspiration.  Whenever I look at the pictures I took, despite the lack of brilliance and technique on my part, I could not help but marvel at the creatures before the lens.  It is such a wonder that even in the delicate folds of petals, you can see all the laws of nature imprinted clearly.

In retrospect, I picked up the book Anatomy of the Rose that my friend Jean Claire gave me during those rainy days (though I abandoned it midway for Kirill Yeskov’s The Last Ring Bearer which, by the way, is an interestingly colorful, funny, cerebral subversion of the ring narrative woven by J.R. Tolkien).  Anatomy of the Rose tells of something we knew all along: flowers are intelligent creatures.  Like humans, they fascinate, they beguile, they ensnare, they fight back in ways that they have evolved through the centuries.   They emit odor to ward off predators even when they also imitate other smells to draw insects to them. Delicate flowers like roses have thorns. Tiny ones have colors that attract attention.

Flowers are very much a part of this big narrative of life that we build every millisecond.  There is something in their pattern, texture, color and shape that speaks of, gives us a preview of that still-to-be-completed (and who knows if we ever complete it?) story of life, of our existence.