Paper Flowers

I went for a little afternoon walk around my neighborhood today and I saw one of the biggest dandelions I’ve ever seen. The plant was huge. The stem was huge. The flower was huge. Everything about it was huge. And it was just sitting in a patch of rocks. I didn’t get a picture of it, of course, but it was beautiful.

That got me thinking about paper flowers. For some reason, Mother’s Day brought out the ads for paper flowers in full force. Any force would have been surprising, as I had not known that this was a market until now. Then I saw an entire segment on paper flowers on Sunday Morning. These flowers are works of art. They’re gorgeous. The skill and time it must take to make them are not something I have the patience to replicate. But I couldn’t shake this one thought:

This is something I will never spend money on.

But why? On the surface it’s an extremely good deal. Expensive, but these are flowers that will never die. Never wilt. If you keep them from direct sunlight, they’ll never fade. Every week when I’m walking through the grocery store or farmer’s market I wish that I was the type of person who would buy fresh flowers for their home. But I’m not. I’m the type of person who buys fresh flowers once a year and then lets them rot in the vase for six months. These paper flowers should be a dream.

But I won’t buy paper flowers for the same reason I don’t buy silk flowers: It has all of the color, but none of the life.

I can’t smell a paper flower. Or, I can, but what would it smell like? I’m probably not going to find an ant crawling on the everlasting doppelganger. I’ll never notice them brown and whither. Never changing, eventually blending into the background so I don’t notice it at all.

Maybe I’m just mad at capitalism. If I had a friend who spent their free time crafting me a gorgeous facsimile flower, I would be over the Moon! I’d keep it forever. There’s love in that. There’s life in that.

Or, maybe I just like a mess. My home office wouldn’t certainly be evidence of that. Where I live is very…same-y. Houses look the same, yards look the same. I like a yard with very little grass in it. A yard that’s covered in native wildflowers. That’s home to gnarly shrubs and a tree or two that look a little wonky. I like it when a person can make their home a home for bees and butterflies and birds and moles. What else is that green patch of Earth for?

My family came to visit recently and noted that the town was very nice. And it is. Very well-kept.

On my way back from my walk, I walked by the ginormous dandelion. In the 20 minutes that had passed, it had been chopped down by a weedwacker. I saw the guy who did it. Just doing his job like he hadn’t cut down the most beautiful plant in the yard.

I could see the razed flower from the sidewalk. Still had all of the color, but none of the life.