One day, I became the unofficial 'flower girl' at the meditation centre I was living at in Uruguay. For 8 months, I made floral arrangements for special events and the spaces we lived in.

Finding flowers was the first challenge. Where do you find flowers in a quiet town in the rainy winter season?  Well, you find them where they grow.  As a Canadian, totally unfamiliar with the native plants, and without formal training, everything was new. I was granted freedom from the categories of ‘weed’ or ‘garden plant’, and was captured by colour and shape. I never really knew what would work until I stuck in a vase. The changing seasons gifted little surprises always.

Pine forest, little parks, sand dunes with hardy spiky vegetation growing between beach and neighbourhood, empty lots, the banks of a crumbly roads, creeks, and marsh. There was also the temptation of a forgotten flower bed of a winter-vacant house. And the temptation of a few not-so-vacant yards.

Yes, I stole flowers. And I guess I justified my innocent thieving by relying on the principals of mountain trekking I learned as a kid called ‘leave no trace’. So I cut with pruning in mind. To make space for new growth, or make something look less shaggy and misshapen. To never up-root a plant, to always leave more of it behind that I took, even if it was a weedy-looking thing.

Sometimes if the perfect branch was feeding a bee or hummingbird, I couldn’t take it. Once, I took all the calla lilies I could find in a gutter trench and felt guilty. But that was the point. I really had to be present with what was happening with me.

The hunt, cleaning the stems, arranging the flowers, displaying the work, the praise and criticism… every step was touched by my process to empty a lifetime of experience. That was the focus. Many times making flowers got me out of some dark emotional ruts and showed me all the places where I needed to love me.

The centre where we lived is serene with black and white features, bare walls, simple furnishings. A burst of colour and smell was sometimes the only thing I had on the hard days. For me, to accept beauty for the sake of beauty as valuable and soulful was a challenge. But when someone shared their appreciation of this beauty and how it lifted them too, that was the real gift. To just get out and bike around and be present with my internal storms. Through loneliness and sadness, frustration and cynicism, elation and disillusionment, and transform it. To practice the art of solitude and inner completion.