A Clumsy First Impression

Welcome to The First Substack of Gathered: Storied Botanicals

I first started this inaugural Substack writing on Wednesday, March 20^th. The spring equinox had just passed. I had released an episode of my podcast, Gathered: Storied Botanicals, that I was excited about. I had just put together a flower arrangement to promote my next floral design workshop at the end of April. The hellebores I had planted last year were blooming and flourishing. That fervor and reinvigoration we’ve come to feel with spring was unfurling on the page.

I designed the arrangements for my April workshop, Reimagining the May Day Basket. I wanted to explore how curly willow can add movement to a design. Vines and branches always make me think of calligraphy with its wily flourishes.

I had a draft started and walked away from it, intending to return that evening with fresh eyes to finish it. I never did.

That evening of March 20^th my home burned down.

Thankfully everyone made it out safely. We’ve salvaged some remnants and plan to rebuild but the fire’s destruction still overwhelms me. So much that I’ve made is just gone.

The floral arrangement sat on the breakfast table when the fire started. Somehow it remained miraculously intact. It sat in the rubble for weeks.

Two and a half months after the fire, it’s still surreal, still hard. I’ll be out driving and catch myself heading back home, following that magnetic pull, before realizing home is no longer there. I still have these flashes of visceral pain—suddenly the wind gets knocked out of me—when I remember again that I’ll never see my childhood bedroom, the view of the cherry tree out my window. I’ll never feel like I can go home again. 

So, it’s strange to return and start again on this writing. That strangeness and pain feel enmeshed in every part of my day. Time is warped. This displacement has distorted everything in the same way the fire charred and melted the remains of my home. Meanwhile, the hellebore blooms are long gone, and the full flowering of spring has given way to verdant summer. I want to pick up where I left off but I’m not sure I can avoid a clumsy first impression here. 

I didn’t start this Substack to delve deeply into my personal life. The idea or mission of Gathered: Storied Botanicals is to illuminate the infinite ways our humanity is intertwined with flowers and plants so that people’s curiosity and admiration for the natural world might grow. And part of that is using my experience as a florist. Another part is using my love for writing, for story. 

Since the fire’s decimation, I find myself confronted with What now? in every aspect of my life. I don’t know how not to include it here, at least at the start.

When I first saw the arrangement after the fire, I broke down. Its resilience gobsmacked me. These flowers withstood the tremendous heat and flames of the fire, the powerful fire hoses, and firefighters smashing windows all around it.

So, if you’ve made it this far, thank you. Here is what I do hope for this Substack and moving forward: 

The podcast, Gathered: Storied Botanicals, is where my love for writing and flowers come together. Storytelling and plants are two things that we all share in some form or another. They feel as elemental as wind or fire. They are resilient and malleable, shifting to fit our needs or finding ways to work around us. And like the elements, they can be tools that aid us–a fire that warms us and cooks our food–just as easily as they can be weaponized against us–a fire that consumes and wages destruction on us. This is just one way (of the seemingly endless ways) that stories and flowers are so fascinating and worth exploring and understanding. 

With each episode, I realize there is so much more to a single flower than I can fit into a podcast draft. Sometimes, I find some fascinating gem that I can’t quite jigsaw into an episode without disrupting the flow or arc of the narrative I’m shaping. Sometimes there’s just not enough time to give a topic’s research its due diligence. 

It’s not unlike designing a floral arrangement. Sometimes a stem needs to be stripped of its leaves or lower blossoms to fit in the vase. Those abandoned or surplus leaves and blossoms are worth our consideration and awe, too.

That’s where this Substack comes in: it is an interlude to the podcast. It is a way to bring more flowers into your life through story. 

Another way that stories and flowers feel so elemental, so integral to our humanity is their ability to connect us. Flowers have the power to mesmerize us, soothe us, teach us, and entertain us. After working with flowers for over a decade, I’ve seen them do just that for so many people walking through the doors of a flower shop or having an arrangement delivered to their doorstep. It isn’t all that different than gathering around a campfire, feeling the warmth of the flames, and sharing good stories under the starlit sky. 

As I regain my footing and rebuild, I’ll release more podcast episodes and installments of this Substack into your inbox. If you’d like more flowers in your life, I hope you’ll follow along and gather ‘round. 

Thank you for reading and until next time.