Flowers just don’t disappoint. Like card number 23, the cosmos...they share a name with our universe and for me, they represent the magic of balance. They remind me of just one instance of beauty and wonder that exists from making order out of chaos. 

This drawing is based on a picture my dad sent to me from the Oakland community garden where he used to garden. I feel very fortunate to have a family that loves to garden even though paradoxically, I can’t seem to grow anything on my own despite my love of nature and my connection to these plants!

My parents grew a memorable flower garden in the house where I grew up and to this day, everything they touch seems to endlessly bloom. There are a few flowers that will always make me think of my parents and the cosmos are one of them. For some reason, my parents seem to grow these flowers wherever they garden.  I remember the cosmos growing in my childhood yard, the cosmos they planted in the various gardens where I’ve lived in my adult life, the cosmos in the community garden where they used to garden, and now the cosmos at the retirement home where they live. Everywhere my parents go, the cosmos seem to grow with them.

When I made this drawing, I felt I captured the way the cosmos can balance so delicately in the wind.  Even though they are being tossed around, they manage to keep their heads up high and sway with the flow of the air.  There was something about this drawing that felt balanced AND not in balance at the same time which is what inspired the prompt :

“What are you balancing in your life? How can you find beauty in times of both harmony and paradox?“  

There does seem to be a lesson in these flowers about finding balance in the flow which inevitably can feel unpredictable and even tumultuous at times.