Flour. To flower. Flowers.

Flour. So many flours.

One of my drawing prompts this week was flour. Looking at a white page while holding a white colored pencil, I thought, I’m done! But no.

Since being diagnosed with celiac disease a few years ago, I’ve discovered many new flours. I could fill an entire pantry with flours – different colors, textures, tastes. And I could fill an entire kitchen with all my failed gluten-free baking experiments. It’s gotten better over the years. Less hockey puck. Less smoosh. Less odd flavor, vaguely reminiscent of beans. Less crumbly. I suspect I’ll always miss “gluteny” baked goods. But at least I can fill a pantry with interesting flours now. And I can draw them.

To flower.

I’ve been spinning my wheels in the business of busy-ness these last few months. If I pack my schedule with lots of little things that take up the day then it’s “progress.” Right?!?! But at the end of the week it’s not. It’s just a stack of work that kept me busy. Without any forward motion. Or even backward motion.

It’s as if I’m a gardener (I’m an excellent failed gardener but that’s another story or ten). As a gardener, I’ve meticulously planned my plot of land. Ordered the seeds or sprouts. Stockpiled the dirt, compost, fertilizer, tools. Tracked the calendar to know when the last frost is coming.

Then… I keep counting and plotting. Ordering and planning. Lots of busy preparation. But no flowers. It turns out, to flower (or in my case to plant flower seeds and get nothing but green leaves… year after year after year), you have to plant the damn flower seeds. Stick them in the ground and see what happens. Do the actual business. Instead of being busy for the sake of busy-ness.

If I were my own best friend, and I knew how much time I’d spent plotting and how much effort I had put into selecting seeds, and how much preparation I’d done (and how much the flowers matter to me), I’d tell myself to plant the damn seeds. Now. Not tomorrow. Or next week. Now.

See what happens. There might be flowers. There might be leaves (like the time I planted 200 or so marigold seeds and 3 seeds grew leaves. No flowers. Just 3 little bunches of leaves). There might be nothing that grows.

But it’s time to stop being busy for the sake of busy. That’s not an actual business. That’s a time-consuming front for the fear of putting the seeds in the ground. The fear that nothing will grow or flower. No one will come.

Today I move on to doing. With a hope of flowering.

Inspired by flowers.

Since I can’t seem to grow them, I take a LOT of pictures of flowers. These are a few photos from the last 2 weeks.

This blog is a hand-crafted, heart-centered piece of work written by a human (not AI). The writing is my own, as are the mistakes and (inevitable) typos. Thank you for supporting a human who writes things. And paints things. And draws things.

If I’ve mentioned any products in this blog, they are things I wanted to share. I don’t receive any compensation. They are simply things I liked and/or choose to write about.