Blog #2 - Sense of Place

Although it may seem counterintuitive to those who primarily think of Florida as a state of beaches and amusement parks, agricultural is big business here. For many students inheriting their family farms, or following their migrant-worker parents from harvest to harvest is an everyday reality, and the public school curriculum reflects that (or at least it used to). In the second grade and again in the sixth, my class tended a small garden of corn, peas, tomatoes and varied greens. In 10th grade home economics we each started a green houseplant from a cutting and had to keep it alive for at least one semester. The novelty of eating food that I grew myself, however, never seemed to extend beyond the schoolyard or last beyond the academic year. I have never grown any edible plants on my own. Flowers are another story.

I’ve always thought that a flourishing flower garden was the height of domesticity. Rows upon rows of brightly colored pansies, petunias, and peonies hedged in by smartly manicured roses (tea roses, not shrub roses). If the mistress of the manor had an especially green thumb, she might have a box of herbs growing under the window ledge where she cooled her homemade pies. This was not anything I witnessed growing up. It was more of a waking dream influenced by Martha Stewart and late 1980’s Independence Day TV commercials. To this day I find her television show awe-inspiring, and at the same time it always irritates me. Although I always wanted one, I was never able to maintain a home garden for long. We moved around quite a bit as I was growing up, and, like myself, my little flower buds were seldom able to put down substantial roots. Wildflowers and standard commercial landscaping were the kind of greenery lining the neighborhood streets of my childhood.

I don't know when I officially became obsessed with collecting flowers. More likely than not, it began when my dad gave me my first digital camera. With a nearly limitless supply of exposures, and a handy set of rechargeable batteries, I was finally able to amass all the flowers that I was unable to grow myself. And I’ve got quite a collection now that includes camellias shot in the USDA National Arboretum in D.C., desert lilies photographed on the edges of the San Bernardino National Forest in California, and a hundred other little blooms whose names I may never know. And that’s enough for me. It’s not exactly the height of environmentalism, but my sinuses are quite grateful.