Echinacea

The purple coneflower is blooming. I’m excited and so very pleased, again. These seem to be my favorite flower for the tenth year in a row? I don’t know. It’s the one time of year that I regret not owning a snazzy camera with bells and whistles. I would create art for canvas and frame for the walls of my home. And when the dreary, grey days of February drag on, I’d gaze at the pictures and feel better.

This is the best pink ever. It’s blue in a blue vase.

Then it’s copper next to bronze. And the cone is orange or maroon depending on the lighting. The flowers last in a vase for weeks literally, on the cabin table. It’s friendly to come back in the door three weeks later to be greeted by these keepers.

I wish to be able to accurately make a pencil drawing of them, just a quick scribble for journal page corners sometimes. So I tried to learn this by doing it and that’s when I realized the pattern of the cone. It’s a spiral… I don’t know the scientific term. This is probably the oldest method ever of learning about something. But I recommend it, because you actually have to really see it to draw it.

My friend Carolyn has a word for what happens to cutting flowers when you gather them. She says, “They produce more blooms exponentially.”

Whatever else summer produces is wonderful, but now that the coneflower blooms, we can consider the season a success.