May 2024

Happy May!! One of my favorite things about heading into this time of year is the Mexican Bird of Paradise flowers blooming from spring all the way to fall. It helps to make the summer months a bit more cheerful! One day I took a clipping off of my dad’s plant and brought it home to dry. When I photographed it I was just loving the way that it hung upside down gave it the feel of a jelly fish. So this month you get to view this plant from a different view than the normal one. Happy May, my friends!

Sea Nettle/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried Mexican bird of paradise.

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April 2024

Happy April!! In Arizona, we are starting April off with rain, and you know the saying, April showers bring May flowers! This is one of my favorite parts of the year watching the desert, and my yard, explode with color!

Now, on to your desktop image, this month features a dried bird of paradise. The bird of paradise flower has a complex structure with bright oranges and purples while the stem is shades of green and red. This great range of colors makes this flower a delight to photograph both while it is fresh and once it is dried. Once the flower dried I was amazed at how vivid the colors remained. I love that the orange colors seemed to even get a bit deeper. One of my other favorite aspects of dried flowers is always that the petals have a mind of their own while drying. Enjoy your wallpaper for April!

The Color of Sunset/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried bird of paradise.

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March 2024

Happy March!!! This month features one of my favorite dried flowers, a tulip. My studio has often been filled with both fresh and dried tulips. Tulips are so transformative, when you purchase them the petals are still tightly bound together. As I photograph them the petals open and put on a beautiful display. Once they are hung to dry they transform again and the petals can turn this way and that. You never know what you will get when you hang them up to dry and that is such a fun part of this process!

Billowing Thunder Clouds/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried tulip.

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February 2024

Happy February! This month features one of my favorite flowers, an Iceland poppy! I love to pick these flowers up when I am at the flower nursery and watch them as they grow. If you haven’t seen one flowering they come from these little pods that open up and you can be surprised with the color that emerges. These delicate beauties give such a bright, cheerful pop of color to my garden. When their petals start to wilt I collect them and save them on my drying rack to see what beautiful shapes they will take.

And now, since it is already 80 degrees in Arizona, I must rush off to the flower nursery to bring some color to my winter garden!

Afternoon Tea Dreams/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried Iceland poppy.

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January 2024

Happy 2024! It’s a new year and time for a new series to display on your desktop! This year your calendars will feature images from the series Growing Old. These images are my favorite way to never have to say goodbye to a flower! There will be many new images of dried flowers mixed in with some you already know and love!

Over the Rainbow/Growing Old

A photograph of a dyed rose.

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How I Dry Flowers

I love when people give a sneak peek of what their “behind the scenes” looks like. I know I have told you before that I love dried flowers and you know I have a whole series on them. When I was in graduate school I had a smaller studio all to myself, which I spent just about every day in and absolutely loved! I would photograph the flowers that I had just purchased and then, if it was already wilting, I would hang them from my metal rack with clothes pins. My studio was COVERED in dry flowers! I couldn’t bear to get rid of the flowers yet when there was still so much beauty waiting to be photographed! 

When we graduated I had to pack up my studio and I took many of those flowers home with me. A couple of years after that we moved from the San Francisco Bay Area back to Phoenix and that same box of flowers made that long trip with us! I had that same box of flowers for quite a few years. During one of our many moves in the first years we were back in Phoenix, we ended up moving 5 times, including from the Bay Area, in five years, which was A LOT of transition, the flowers had finally had enough of being moved from one spot to the next and I let those dried flowers go.

This wonderful hanger displays my flowers and dries them perfectly!

Obviously, I still have an obsession with dried flowers and I still have them around my art studio while they wait to be photographed. There are times that I get them right off of the plant, pick them out of a bouquet that is wilting, and of course when I have finished photographing them. I got this amazing little drying rack, for clothes, that I hung and now it dries my flowers and it displays them so beautifully for me to see every time I walk in the room. 

The flowers that were forgotten while we were out of town but still have so much character.

The kids and I went to Minnesota a few weeks ago and I bought some peonies right before I left, thinking that I would have free time before we left, spoiler alert, I was wrong! My flowers got left in the vase they were in the whole time that we were gone! They dried very nicely and are continuing to hang out in the vase until it is time to move them. (It’s only 112 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now and I work in a non-air-conditioned area.) But I just want you to share that even when they are forgotten in a vase they can still dry in a beautiful way!

Flowers taken from my parent’s house from a bouquet for my dad’s 90th birthday.

I hope that this peek into my dried flowers was interesting and helpful! Soon I hope to press flowers, which I do have some hidden away, and talk to you about those as well! Let me know if this inspires to as well to give drying flowers a go!

Memories

Memories/Growing Old

Memories

The simple act of handing someone a flower can stick in your memory like glue. All throughout my childhood, we had a variety of rose bushes growing in our yard. Often my dad would pick one and bring it to my mom or to one of us girls. Those times that my dad would bring in a rose especially for me always made me feel special.

Last spring my husband, Bryce, took our daughter, Violet, to her first Father/Daughter dance. He thought ahead of what would be a great memory for her and he picked out a pink rose, her favorite color, for their special night. Because she sees that I save all of the flowers, to photograph, she asked me to photograph her rose.

This is the importance of love and making memories.

Peonies - A Poem By Mary Oliver

Plumage/Growing Old

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, where they were talking about a poem that one of the podcasters loves about peonies. I loved the way that Mary Oliver describes the way that the peonies “bend their bright bodies and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding.” These lines really spoke to me about the peonies. I can just imagine peonies out in a field, at sunset, with the light bouncing off of them and their soft fragrance gently in the air.

I have loved pink peonies for a long time, they are so decadent and the petals are so full, soft and beautiful! I had wanted to photograph a peony for so long, don’t ask me why I never did before because there was no real reason, and last year I finally picked some up! They were just as wonderful as I imagined and expected them to be! 

Well, you know me, just having photographed them when they were living wasn’t enough for me! I saved those beautiful flowers, dried them, and put them away until I could photograph them for the series Growing Old. While we have all been home, in quarantine, I pulled out many of the dried peonies and photographed them. Plumage is the result of that photography session!

It makes me long for peonies this year and question if we will be seeing them in grocery stores when we venture out.

Enjoy this beautiful poem and, if you have time, tell me what your favorite part was as well.

Peonies  by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities —
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

from New And Selected Poems by Mary Oliver 

© Mary Oliver

A Change in Perspective

Sea Nettle/Growing Old

A photograph of a Mexican bird of paradise.

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

- W.B. Yeats

I find this such a fitting thought for dried flowers. I feel that flowers have been waiting and waiting for our senses to grow sharper and take a look at them once their original beauty has faded. 

My parents have two big beautiful Mexican bird of paradise shrubs in their front yard and I always love when they are in full bloom. They are rich with yellows, oranges, and bright reds (and as a bonus, they attract butterflies and hummingbirds!) The last time their shrub was in bloom I took a few of the flowers to dry and photograph. The individual flowers are relatively small but, I really wanted to see what they would look like dried. 

This beautiful flower dried in just the way that I had hoped it would. The stamen of the Mexican bird of paradise stayed intact, which can be very delicate, and I worried that they might break off. I feel like with this flower that the stamen made such a huge impact to this image. I photographed this flower in a few different ways and it always amazes me how if you just turn the flower, or turn the camera, how you can end up with a totally different image and what that image can evoke. With this image, I was struck with the feeling of a jellyfish! I love how you can obviously tell that this is a flower, however, it can take you to another place.

I use these little changes of perspective to remind myself that there are little changes of perspective to be had all over the place. What can I look at differently today?

Growing Old Series Origins

The Golden Knot/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried tulip.

I don't know about you but when I was younger always kept flowers from special occasions. I would hang them up in my room and treasure those memories. I guess, even then, I hated the idea of these beautiful flowers just going to the trash, so instead, I kept them.

I started the series Growing Old while I was in school in San Francisco. I was spending hours alone in my studio photographing flowers and found that yet again I couldn't bear to get rid of them, so, they kept me company. I knew that these flowers had so much more life in them even after they had officially died.

I had many different types of flowers hanging up to dry in my little studio but one of my favorite flowers to dry was tulips. Tulips are so interesting just in general and to watch them over a whole lifespan is amazing. When I would purchase tulips in the morning they were closed and after being in my studio for awhile the petals would start to open up. After having them for a day or two they would start to droop and then I would hang them up. As you can see, the petals took on a life of their own! Some petals would be spread open wide, while others would almost tangle themselves in a knot. I loved the unique shapes that they created.

I kept many of these dried flowers through our moving from the Bay Area down to Phoenix. I was entirely amazed at how well the flowers stayed together throughout our many moves when we arrived here in Phoenix. After years of delicately moving them from one place to another and having two children, it was time to say goodbye to the box that held all of these precious petals. I do still collect and dry flowers but now once I photograph them I allow myself to let go of them and keep my space, both mentally and physically, clear.

Fluttering Kimono/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried tulip.