At
what I can only estimate to be the halfway point of a long, arduous,
heartbreaking, wanderlusty journey as a writer I accidentally stumbled
upon flowers. As an immovable type-A personality Taurean, I didn't
really even entertain the possibility of veering off course from what
had become a seemingly Sisyphian endeavor: to get paid to write. To make
it in New York as a writer. When flowers spilled into my life I was
still attempting to go for it - murmuring silent uninspiring
inspirations like "Rome wasn't built in a day" or "Today is the first
day of the rest of your life" and any number of variations on the hang
in there theme.
I pitched a story to New York Magazine's The Cut
on the flower girls of Brooklyn - I had seen them around, I had noticed
their distinctly earthy and fashionable sartorial stylings - they were,
to me, these lovely earth mother creatures and I wanted to stand in the
same room with them and their flowers. I did a Style Profile on them -
http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/style-tribes-the-flower-girls-of-brooklyn.html
- photographing each of them in their heady and dreamy studios and I
think that was when a small tea kettle in the back of my mind started
ever so quietly whistling.
Then came an incredibly disappointing
February where all my connections (I say all but in reality they were
meager at best - nonetheless they were mine) fell through. Editors left,
budgets were cut, and I was just another faceless freelancer. That was
when I felt the feeling we all feel here in New York from time to time -
shoulder to shoulder with inspiration and talent and the hope of
opportunity - I suddenly felt like I had no options. I felt like I had
so tirelessly and blindingly pursued a goal only to reach the point
where I had to start all over again. I couldn't. I hit a wall. I planned
to launch a blog with the blind fever that comes with a new project - I
had delusions of grandeur, sussed out all my connections, dreamed of
fame, shot a couple style profiles only to have the easy languid limbs
of summer ferry me away from the blog and away to several wonderful
trips upstate where flowers howl and spill all over the damn place. I
started to play. I started arranging them. I loved it. And as Fall
approached I started to think I could maybe try to do this. I never said
it out loud to anyone except my boyfriend - I wanted to keep it a
secret in the fear that, like writing, it might not work. It felt like
the beginning stages of when you first fall in like with someone -
looking to protect my heart I downplayed what I was doing ("Yeah, we're
just kindof hanging out - no commitment right now - I mean, we're just
having fun right now and seeing where it goes.") but then it became
clear that I was really pursuing this. I hit the honeymoon stage -
happily and eagerly learning the names of flowers, falling into an
online black hole, clicking from one floral image to another,
exhilarated, looking through the keyhole into this secret universe. In
one of my cyber wanderings I stumbled upon Constance Spry - one of her
arrangements is pictured below - and was just so inspired by this woman
who pioneered the floral frontier.
Spry taught people that they
could beautify their homes with flowers plucked from hedgerows and
scraps of wasteland and encouraged the use of unassuming materials like
berries, vegetable leaves, twigs, ferns and weeds displayed in what were
unthinkable vessels like gravy boats and bird cages, to tureen lids and
baking trays.
In an era when
millions of people were decorating their homes to their own taste for
the first time, Constance Spry helped them to do so with flair and for
very little money. Believing that everyone had the right to beautify
their home and that the means of doing so could be found in woods and
the nature that surrounds all of us Spry popularized her essentially
bohemian style of home-making by dispensing no-nonsense advise in books,
articles and radio broadcasts all over the world. “I do feel strongly,
she once wrote, “that flowers should be a means of self-expression for
everyone."
