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((( flora )))

Layers of Curly Branches

Long before I even imagined taking photos of myself or really anything, indeed, before I thought much about myself past the extent of hunger or rest, I became friends with the flora surrounding me. Rustling oaks and ancient apricots, crimson fairy trumpets and white evening primrose flowers, open to the giant moths and bats in the evenings. I studied the trees, the flowers. The shape of their leaves, the electric feeling they would give off, the shape of their being burned into my mind. I don’t really know where my love for nature begins and where I, myself, end. We are all part of the same interconnected web of energy, exchanging carbon and oxygen.

I put together specimen cards, collected through the hills where I lived. Evening Prim Rose and Pink Wild Rose were the first entries. I obtained some papers with sideless clear envelopes and asked how to spell the words for the labels, and used foot long sections of tape to secure my prizes in various states of dissection. Life seemed more straightforward then. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it (most of the time – within reason for a six year old).

Plant life, with its myriad of forms, has always fascinated me. The graceful curves of a vine as it finds its way toward the light, climbing ever higher, reaching and clutching. I don’t know that I could walk past an iris without stopping to admire the iridescent glittering, with its shades of purple unfathomable, as black veins lined with white feathers protrude deeply down, splitting the center of each petal. Really an iris in any of the very many colors could stop me in my tracks, though the purple ones always draw me in the most. The hidden city maps in leaves. Fractal patterns, repeating over and over in innumerable forms. Layer upon layer of tangled branches, beauty hidden in between, like a bird, making its nest there.