Every fruit was once a flower.

As a kid, I adored Harriet The Spy’s curiosity and wanted to be her friend so badly. Because of her I kept a top secret journal and sleuthed for clues between the nooks of our house and the curbs and sidewalks of our small neighborhood. I was desperate for adventure, eager to believe there were incredible mysteries at my fingertips that needed to be unearthed by me. And so, like most of us, a good part of my childhood was spent learning the art of observation and imagination. Some call it play or make believe, but I like to think of it as bearing witness.

To be creative is to commit to seeing the possibility of new worlds.We dreamers are insistent on cultivating new visions, no matter the glaringly bleak reality of our surroundings.

I’m still very much that little girl searching for signs of the bigger story around me. Admittedly, growing up has challenged the level of childhood wonder I had back in my Harriet The Spy days, but there are still many awe-filled moments I’ve experienced lately that I want to celebrate. And today I’d like to share one of the most childlike moments of my adulthood with you: the day I realized how fruit is birthed.

Wonder, Part 1: Awareness

In my freshman year of arts high school, a guest illustrator was invited to visit our drawing class to share how he built his career. He made a living creating color pencil drawings of fruit and flowers for packaged goods. Before then, I’d rarely noticed the lyrical drawings on body wash bottles, yogurt cups, or fruit juice cartons. But when he showed us his rendition of a cluster of bright oranges on a vine of orange blossoms, my heart leapt. The Florida girl in me immediately recognized the drawing from Florida’s Natural Orange juice carton. I was fan-girling hard, I’d seen his work in my fridge growing up!

It occurs to me now that that this man was probably the first person to show me a fruit and its blossom at once. I didn’t live live near a garden or farm as a kid, so I didn’t know where my fruit came from, or how it became, well … fruit.

Wonder, Part 2 : Realizing

A couple of summers ago, I was picking Acerola cherries from my dad’s backyard and after a few moments of picking, I began slowly noticing the different stages of growth the fruit goes through. Each flower petal evolved into a green, pink, then eventually red cherry. And it seemed the flower itself became the fruit, but this couldn’t be possible- could it?

Excited and in disbelief (did they teach us this in middle school?), I googled it and learned that yes, every flower has an ovary and that ovary eventually becomes fruit 🤯 Every blueberry, watermelon, mango, cherry, passion fruit, avocado we’ve ever eaten was once a flower. The petals fall away and the stamen evolves into seed and flesh. We’re eating ovaries, y’all. Orange blossoms, zucchini flowers, almond flowers, cotton flowers, mango flowers - all ovaries!

Wonder, Part 3 : The Process

The process of a flower becoming fruit is a treat to see. It requires presence and time. First, there’s the awe-filled evolution of a fruit. But then there’s the sobering reality of pruning and waiting for the fruit to ripen followed by the labor of picking the fruit and tending to its survival.

This for me is the perfect analogy for creativity, and frankly life.

Life is generative. And yet, most of us don’t feel we have much time to appreciate it. We ration our time between screens, meetings, appointments, family, relationships and work, but we don’t dedicate much attention to how life is evolving in and around us. We’re busy pruning, and tending to the labor, but where’s the fruit?

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new month, smack dab in the middle of a work week. Wherever life finds you this month, I hope you’ll join me in taking time asses all we've chosen, witnessed, survived, and become so far this year.

You deserve to spaciousness to observe and appreciate all the ways your life is evolving and bearing fruit. 🌸

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3 Awe ‘Tings

a short list of awe-inspiring content to get you through the week.

📖 The Awe of God an eye opening book on the biblical approach to awe 🎧 <