As one who practices Kado, or The Way of Flowers, I believe in slow—as in Slow down and grow your own flowers. More importantly, notice them (really notice them), create with them, meditate on them, become like them. I call this shift in nature consciousness The Beyond Slow Flower Movement, a style of living that disappeared somewhere back in antiquity, before we started buying imported roses at Fred Meyer for $9.99 a dozen.
Much like the Slow Food Movement, which emphasizes growing your own food, sustainably and organically, cooking it without microwaves—or not cooking it at all, as “raw” foodists do—and taking the time to create beautiful, healthy and delicious meals, The Slow Flower Movement calls us to plant and tend to flowers in an organic, sustainable, and life-affirming manner. In “Beyond Slow” we not only grow our own—or buy local—we create a flower “meal” using the art of ikebana (Japanese Flower Arranging) to honor the ingredients of flowers, leaves, and branches. We simultaneously contemplate how flowers mirror our own unique and life-affirming essence, and teach us the great lessons of patience, humility, and the beauty inherent in impermanence: cycles of beginning, maturing, ending, transforming.
Although growing…
