The scent of freesias.
Today, I bought some flowers. Freesias, tulips, roses.
The scent of the freesias, particularly, is perfect; light and fresh, like an expensive cleaning product, but without the burning after-rush and potential for developing chemical sensitivities.
Adam was given a garden filled with the most beautiful plants imaginable.
Many of the most famous garden and floral designers are men.
And yet having flowers, wanting to have flowers, is seen as "feminine" - when surely the most masculine action is to force living things to develop according to your will, and then, when those things are in their prime, cut them from their life support system, freeze them, and ship them all around the world to slowly die for the next couple of weeks.
Yes; I know how cut flowers work - I'm not good with houseplants, and I don't get a garden; I get a concrete yard, in which every single thing I have ever potted up for a splash of colour has died.
Today, I bought some flowers. Freesias, tulips, roses.
The scent of the freesias, particularly, is perfect; light and fresh, like an expensive cleaning product, but without the burning after-rush and potential for developing chemical sensitivities.
Adam was given a garden filled with the most beautiful plants imaginable.
Many of the most famous garden and floral designers are men.
And yet having flowers, wanting to have flowers, is seen as "feminine" - when surely the most masculine action is to force living things to develop according to your will, and then, when those things are in their prime, cut them from their life support system, freeze them, and ship them all around the world to slowly die for the next couple of weeks.
Yes; I know how cut flowers work - I'm not good with houseplants, and I don't get a garden; I get a concrete yard, in which every single thing I have ever potted up for a splash of colour has died.
A friend's father, who'd spent his life working construction, who'd been in prison, who was known as something of a lady's man, always had blush pink roses in his house.
My grandfather, a factory worker for almost fifty years, in common with many of the men in the rural villages of the community I grew up in - men retired from farming, construction, driving, men who lived hard, and worked harder - grew rose bushes that he was as focused on and worried over as people typically assume women are with their children.
Flowers are soft and delicate - but the process of humans getting to have them, whether in gardens or cut form, is a hard, complex process that involves a lot of hard, physical labour, a lot of resillience, and a lot of commitment. Which, perhaps, is a metaphor for humanity in general, rather than any particular gender, which would explain why humans are drawn to flowers, plants, trees, the countryside.
Flowers, like people, are prized or dismissed depending on how controllable they are; the flowers we hot house and cut off in their prime get to be flowers; those that just crop up, often in inconvenient places, and thrive whether they're cared for or not, are dismissed as "weeds."
My grandfather, a factory worker for almost fifty years, in common with many of the men in the rural villages of the community I grew up in - men retired from farming, construction, driving, men who lived hard, and worked harder - grew rose bushes that he was as focused on and worried over as people typically assume women are with their children.
Flowers are soft and delicate - but the process of humans getting to have them, whether in gardens or cut form, is a hard, complex process that involves a lot of hard, physical labour, a lot of resillience, and a lot of commitment. Which, perhaps, is a metaphor for humanity in general, rather than any particular gender, which would explain why humans are drawn to flowers, plants, trees, the countryside.
Flowers, like people, are prized or dismissed depending on how controllable they are; the flowers we hot house and cut off in their prime get to be flowers; those that just crop up, often in inconvenient places, and thrive whether they're cared for or not, are dismissed as "weeds."
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