floral resistance

Paul Harding describes flowers as an act of resistance in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers.  

Reading this on the bus heading into Harvard Square this morning, I thought: Yes.  

There are reasons I love flowers: they are beautiful, vibrant; many help the local bee population. Their seeds are all different—some the size of a dot of the i, some wispy and irregular like a burr.  I like to spill the packets out into my palm and marvel at the strange seeds with their universe of potential.

But I love them for something else: I love them for their reminder that things take time.   Texts, emails, posts—they seem to suggest a different sort of time. There’s an urgency, an immediacy, that they suggest. There’s something detached from reality, detached from Nature’s time, about technology.

Flowers unfurl cell by cell, leaf by leaf, and then, petal by petal. I stand in the garden, dutifully watering them, coaxing them out, as the sun and the rain has done, and the soil. I tap my feet, I long for the hot red of the zinnia to bloom, the lashes of the sunflower to blink, the airy heads of the cosmos to dance. 

They take their time. 

There is no explaining to them that “there’s a drop dead deadline and hurry up already!” They respond to no bottom line, to no key stakeholder who “wants them blooming by Tuesday!”

I love this.

Flowers have their function in nature, but I tend to think of flowers as an indulgence. When I plant them, I do think of pollinators that will benefit from their pollen, but I also think of the way their blooming masses of color and texture will alight my kitchen table. I think of their beauty, which simply gives me joy and peace.  

In both time and function, then, I see that for me, growing flowers is an act of resistance. They are proof that there is still a Time that exists independent of my Tweets, and emails, and buzzing cell phone. The flowers are not feeding me (though I grow edible flowers too)—not my stomach anyway. They are feeding my soul, with their head and arms reaching for the sky, and drooping their heads when they grow heavy. They are growing, then sitting patiently, and dipping happily when a fat bumbler alights. They are the proof I need.