“There’s too many flowers,” said no one, ever. – Sherri Shockler

I’ve never bought myself this many flowers before – and it makes me so happy.  The sunflowers and lisianthus, the larkspur and celosia, each adds a different voice to my solitary room, making their compelling argument for being yourself.  “Here’s what was meant to be, and look – I’ve unfolded as planned, except even more beautifully than you’d hoped.”

I do feel a little proud of introducing these particular flowers to each other, because they didn’t come this way.  I bought them from different farmers, along with purple-black plums and sweet white corn.  One farmer improvises bouquets of long, twisting prairie blossoms, the other cuts an orderly production line of incandescent dahlias, punctuated with high purple spires.  Today, I decided I didn’t have to choose.

This has been a year of so many non-trivial losses.  I couldn’t keep spending Sundays without you, and squeeze my heart back into the bud, to hope for a safer, better season.  It’s too late for that.  But I think these surrogate petals have carried on for me – finishing the work I thought we’d started.  Undaunted, they open up, and relish the unfurling, despite its inevitable end. Because that is what hearts need to do.