Flowers & Construction

I haven’t written a journal entry for Parsley & Rue in some time. Running a business (and a life) felt fast and full and, sometimes, teetering on the edge of chaos. For example, the last few months our home has been under renovation, so I’ve spent a good deal of time sequestered in our bedroom with our two dogs. For them this was heaven: for once they were allowed up on the bed, and to make things even better, one of their humans was up on the bed with them. I was back to working with my laptop on my lap (giving the name of the computer new meaning) while just outside the door were strange men banging and sawing and hammering and drilling and filling our house up with dust, mess, and a strong sense of displacement, and, sometimes, danger.  I locked the dogs and I into the room in the morning—especially on those days when a worker I had never seen before suddenly emerged from around the corner, mallet or drill in hand.

My buckets of flowers were on our bedroom carpet, leaving wet circles that I attacked with towels to try to avoid mold and stink. The flowers and foliage looked so out of place there in the bedroom, especially the long, woody branches that seemed to grow longer every moment in the strange space, catching their brittle tips in the closet doors, or on my sweater, or in the fluffy tails of our dogs. The late-autumn roses looked too formal, too colorful, too fancy there between our bed and the dresser.  The snapdragons and late-season delphinium far too tall and lofty. The buckets themselves looked grimy even though they were clean.  Everything was out of place and yet life, and business, continued. 

One day I couldn’t take the noise and smallness of the room any longer and opened our bedroom curtains so I could see a sliver of rhododendron, camellia bush, blue sky.  I began a design for a customer and had just placed the foundational foliage, and the first focal flowers. For the first time in weeks I was almost—just barely—hitting my usual creative design zone. A cardinal flew past the window and I glanced up, almost—just barely—feeling my normal awe. But then a face appeared on the other side of the window. A worker. I jumped, startled out of my almost-reverie. He was gesticulating and pointing to the door. I helped him with his issue and then slunk back into the bedroom, locking the door behind me and then, closing the curtains I had so hopefully opened just minutes before. The birds and leaves and blue sky disappeared.  The dogs stopped wrestling and collapsed on the bed like washed-up flotsam, exhausted.  I finished that design in the dim overhead light and too-bright bedside lamplight. I was happy with the design, but I can’t say I had hit my stride. If florals could talk, I thought, and tell people the environment in which their design had been created, what would my clients think?  Would they suddenly find the design lacking, if they knew it was done on a tiny table in a semi-dark room with two wrestling dogs, drywall dust sifting in from under the door, with the deafening whirr, bang, crash of construction and a designer who hadn’t showered in three days because her only bathroom was torn apart and still had not been put back together? It made me wonder: is our perception of beauty conditional? What are those conditions?

Just yesterday we finally got our house back to ourselves, and back in order.  The contractor was problematic and had left a sour taste in our mouths, but I didn’t even care because I was so happy to have room, and privacy, again.  The studio aka garage where I used to design had been turned into a bedroom, and my floral supplies moved to a downstairs storage room. I had never had my supplies inside before and the ease was unexpected and nice.  I no longer had a studio but now I had an office, for the first time. I’m writing here in that office right now. 

An order came in last night and I had a lovely back-and-forth email exchange with the sender in almost total quiet. Quiet.  I can hear myself think again and what I’m thinking is that the last few months have been deeply odd. Bringing water and buckets and chicken wire and snips and flower food and, especially, foliage and flowers into the cramped, dark, increasingly dog-smelling space of our carpeted bedroom for forty days made me realize that nature has given us something so incredibly special with flowers. The fact they looked wrong and too-bright, too-colorful, too-elegant, too-luxe in my bedroom amid the dust and noise just went to show that they are inherently gorgeous, satisfying something in us that we may not even know needs satisfying. Did they bring beauty to my crummy bedroom? Yes, unequivocally. But they also were a lot, as my teen would say. They belonged on a better stage: in the garden, or on a table, or arching over people in love, or being held in the hands of a child, or on the casket of a much-loved one. They are like all other living beings: they need light and air and space and, above all, others who cherish them. That’s where their inherent, wildly abundant beauty really shines. So, does this mean Irish author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford was right, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? –I always interpreted that as meaning beauty is subjective. But now I wonder if perhaps beauty doesn’t become beauty unless and until it is seen by another. Experienced by another.  Even though the flowers in my bedroom seemed too much for the space they were in, like a tropical bird trapped in an attic,  there is no denying that the flowers didn’t take on the dust and dinge of the room; they shone out from within it. Because I was there to see the contrast.  I’m not missing the chaos of the construction, but I sure am thankful I had the chance to learn yet another thing, something new, about these plants I so love. About beauty.