I have been reading Jamaica Kincaid’s Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya. It describes her trip to Nepal in 2000 to collect seeds. Comprehensively, she describes the heat, the walking, the leaches, and the Maoists. I wonder will the seed collecting be worth it. Would I even recognize these plants in their native habitat with a casual glance. How do you feel if you only see it blooming, no seeds to be found after climbing 6000 feet.
Today, I took the motivating opportunity of 50 degree sunshine to dig up dahlias. I store them on the floor in the cool studio under my pottery ware racks. I found vigorous worms in the tubers and my motivation to be diligent was encouraged. As I bring these plants in I feel a profound responsibility for the flowers. The current thinking is that one should not do too much garden cleanup so the bugs can overwinter, thus ready to do their thing come spring. But some clean up was called for so I made a little pen for my branches and stems. While cutting and digging I collected pods and seeds as if they were new to me, anticipating photographing an intriguing one nestled in a small handmade vessel.
“And my difficulties were these: I found each plant, each new turn in the road, each new turn in the weather, from cold to hot and then back again, each new set of boulders so absorbing, so new, and the newness so absorbing, and I was so in need of an explanation for each thing, that I was often in tears, troubling myself with questions, such as what am I and what is the thing in front of me.”
–Jamaica Kincaid, from Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya, Picador, p. 135.