Behind the Plants
The photographs, sketches, annotations, pressed plants — accumulated across the years, showing the paths her life had followed, all preserved in this one overflowing scrapbook. The behind-the-scenes of these samples contained all that Louise had seen, in her little adventures across the world; from Sydney to Perth, Europe and America — leading specimen by specimen to the woman she was today. Those engravings across her leathery face were like titles and subheadings on a well-worn book, showing only glimpses of the vicarious, youth-filled life which lay underneath.
When Louise was gone, those small fragments of life in her precious book would form the montage of her own life.
Louise’s fingers, marred with the grey-purplish blotches of age, ran across the intricacies of the first page — a page she had viewed so many times that it was ingrained into her memory. She knew the disphyma flower remained the vibrant violet it had been on the day it had been preserved, by the same fingers which brushed across them still, but long ago, when the skin had been unblemished, the nails stained with dirt, yet still delicate. Those hands had long since lost their vitality, but not the disphyma.
Louise longed to wind back the clock.
It had been her third month as an intern, trailing behind Dr. Brown through the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. Three months she had spent following him around, notepad always at hand, pencil poised over the pages of the scrapbook which had been empty and flat back then. Months spent squatting in the sweltering humidity of the greenhouse, enthralled by the diversity of organisms, all fascinatingly unique and extraordinary in their vibrancy, texture, aroma.
Her internship had ended after that summer, and Louise had traveled to the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, eager to continue filling her scrapbook, which had remained mostly bare. The gardens were spectacular, she knew, but painstakingly neat, each plant forming unnaturally distinct and regular boundaries.
A clear-cut square of striking strelitzia.
A rigid border of brilliant amethyst agapanthus framing a carefully placed circle of golden wattles.
Louise’s enjoyment was constricted somewhat by this air of superficiality, the idea that the plants had been placed there by human design, a deliberate man-made construction. Louise had yearned for a different sort of splendor, the grandeur of mingling species, the medley of life in co-existence.
And so Louise’s real journey began. Her adventures across Australia, fully captivated by the natural peaks and crevices of the earth. The connection she forged with each individual place she traveled to, she captured with a plant, until overtime, her scrapbook became a lasting recollection of all her past relationships to the land. Each plant held its own little tale, and Louise — now with thinning, white hair and tired joints — could regale her grandchildren with her entire life story, just by sharing that story each plant held.
They would sit around her in anticipation as she flipped through the pages until she stumbled across one which seized her interest.
“Ah,” Louise would sigh wistfully, “That was when…” And then she would indulge in reminiscing of the past.
Now, as Louise flipped through the pages, she longed for those days when she could still see the vivid pigments, the sheer variety in the hues. But those days were over.
At least sitting outside, she could still smell the sharp fragrance of the eucalyptus, savor the sweet whiffs of lemon-scented myrtles. At least sitting outside, she might brush across the waxy surface of native leaves, or perhaps some velvety petals, or the defensive spikiness of those Australian flowers.
It was a shame though, that in her scrapbook only those colors were preserved, and the book remained woefully scentless besides the musty odor of the yellowing pages themselves. The texture, too, was lost under Louise’s unsteady, insensitive touch. The ridges, bumps, which ought to be there, all flat under the loose skin of her hands.
Well — Louise thought — it wasn’t the actual plants that were most important to her now.
No — it was the voices she had listened to on the way, the rich stories they had told.
It was the people behind the plants.
