The Botanical Post

December's Edition

I’m already putting together the first Botanical Post of 2026! It’s surreal! After mailing all of December’s Posts to subscribers (thank you again!), and giving them a chance to receive and enjoy them, I thought I’d share what they got in the mail last month. Plus, I’ve included an audio of a poetry reading.

Floral Art Print

This was one of the first cyanotypes I created. Instead of using the actual blooms and leaves to create the indigo and white silhouettes, I took a photo, inverted it into a negative, and used that negative to create the witch-hazel cyanotype. I was struck by the crispness of the strange witch-hazel blossoms in the foreground, but I also love the painterly quality of this piece. I like seeing the brush strokes of the chemicals that create that rich shade of blue.

The Floral Postcard

In keeping with the wintry blues of the floral art print, I sent out a postcard featuring a white Amaryllis bloom on a windowsill in my first Chicago apartment. Sometimes the Amaryllis flowers get “shy” (or top-heavy) and tilt downwards, making them tricky to arrange. These blooms rested perfectly in the vase (which I think was my roommate’s shot glass).

The Poem

The poem, Waking This First Night Sharing My Bed, has lived through many revisions and rewritings. I first drafted it back in college when I lived in Savannah. I remember writing it and imagining that I shared my bed with someone, waking in the night, and feeling connected to them, feeling connected to a home we could build together, feeling connected in the vital and unseen way that we are connected to flowers and plants through breath—that exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. An inhale for an exhale.

This poem is also a piece of writing that survived the house fire that took so much of my writing, so when I rediscovered it, it felt like an opportunity to tinker with it a bit more and see if there was something more to say in it.

Here is the reading of Waking on my podcast, Gathered: Storied Botanicals. You can listen to the reading here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

My Shameless Plug

If you liked what you saw, read, and heard, I’d love for you to consider joining The Botanical Post. In addition to the art print, poem, and postcard, you’ll also receive a letter from me. I love delivering flowers to people’s podcast feeds and email inboxes, and this is another way I can bring more flowers into your life.

It gives you a chance to unplug from a screen, savor the novelty of receiving mail that isn’t another bill, and create your own ritual of taking in some flowers and words.

Plus, if your New Year’s resolution was to be a bit more mindful or intentional in 2026, this is a great way to help you keep that resolution.

I’m putting together January’s Botanical Post, so if you join before the 15th, you’ll receive the first Botanical Post of the year!

Thank you, as always, for your support, and until next time.