About the Journal

I feel as though I’ve been floating for the last several years. Longer, really. In motion but never arriving anywhere, like I’m on an elevator that’s moving between floors but never lands on any one in particular. I try to remind myself of what we’ve been through. We: my husband and I, picking up and moving our lives more than once, having a baby who is now a wild-haired, obstinate, goofy toddler. Me: changing careers, upsetting the plans I so carefully crafted in favor of something both more and less clear. We: a country, a culture, battered by regression, fragmented.

I feel behind. Sometimes, not always. As if there is a correct way to do things, and a correct time to do things, and I have done neither.

Always a late bloomer.

I feel hopeful, too. Closer to landing. Flowers have something to do with that, a new direction.

I love working with flowers. I love that flowers are tangible, that they have their own unique movements and energies. They’re incredibly beautiful and incredibly messy. They live and breathe, and then wilt and die, and are a fleeting reminder to be in the moment.

The Elderflower Journal is an exploration and celebration of our relationship with flowers. They are, as Randy Malamud writes in Strange Bright Blooms, “surprisingly useful in their apparent uselessness.” For centuries, we have tried to capture flowers, to hold onto them through paintings, embroidery, poetry, photography. We eat and drink them, we use them in our homes and on our skin. And of course, we adorn our spaces and our sacred celebrations with them.

I’m not entirely sure what shape this will take. I’m sure some of it will be quite aimless, I hope it will be engaging and enlightening-for both myself and for whomever is still reading on the other side of the screen. I’m excited to have a space to document floral discoveries and experiences, to share my work and the work of others, to write, and to land. Let’s see where this goes.

– Annamarie