strengths

Since it has FINALLY stopped raining and summer has launched, the camera has asserted its authority over my attention. This week I walked to the hospital garden on my way home and then the next evening, I paused around neighborhood where I work. The light was perfect.

I love shooting flowers. My mom, the watercolorist, loved painting them,

and I have memories of her setting up still life bouquets that would stay in place for days until the blooms fell apart, scattering petals and pollen all over the dining room table. She never really had an appreciation for the beauty of decay, so as soon as the blossoms aged she seemed compelled to clear it all away. Also, we were rambunctious, clumsy children, so there was no hope that we'd be able to leave the arrangement--or her!--alone.

Things eventually fall apart. I have a painting of hers in my guest room. It was the last project before she died: an image of a single, unopened rosebud alongside a wide open blossom, spent but still lovely, petals falling. She never finished it, but it moves me in the way it seems to depict her acceptance of the inevitable.