Color Yourself Happy

The days hum along. Ordinary. The vases of flowers await. There is good and satisfying work to be done. Not the kind of work that is actually avoidance. Nor the kind of work that pushes and pursues. This is the kind of work that creates a buffer of joy against all of the struggles of a real life. I am protected by this practice, and this does not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Most Days

Most days begin with caring for the flowers. Snip the stem ends. Pull off leaves beginning to decay. Put fresh water in the vase. Cull out flowers that are dying and rearrange those that remain.

This simple practice is highly meditative. The flowers add joy to the day; they are the substrate of my work these days. No grocery store bouquets. These flowers all come from local flower farms that use sustainable practices. They are not meant to last long. I have, at best, a week to breathe them in. A week to soak in their color and let my fingers run along their petals. To take their picture in as many ways as possible.

Let it be

Mount Olympus Farm, Ruther Glen, Virginia | Summer 2026

I want to share every word of Wesley Verhoeve’s Sunday post, You Don’t Ask a Tree What It Means. It’s well worth the read, and more importantly, it is incredibly reassuring for those of us who take pictures as our passion.

These are Wesley’s words that most sincerely resonate with me—

When I first started taking photos, I talked myself out of so many of them because I couldn’t answer that question. What’s it about? What’s the point? Why does this one matter? As if a picture has to file a report before it’s allowed to exist.

You don’t ask that of a tree. You let the tree be beautiful.

And I would argue the same is true for flowers. One of the reasons that I continue to return to flowers as photographic subjects is that they resist authorship. They do not need to be optimized or rearranged. They arrive complete.

Wesley continues . . .

So here’s the permission, if you want it. That photo you keep not taking because you can’t explain it, take it. The one sitting in your archive that you’ve never shown anyone because you wouldn’t know what to say about it, it doesn’t owe you a statement. It’s allowed to just be.

And that is enough.