Rose Hips

Nature is a source of endless poetry.
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While myths and poems have upheld her fragrant petals and her thorns, the rose’s ripe hips don’t seem to get as much press. Yet the hips simply exist in another season of the plant’s cyclical life — a metamorphosis from summer flowers to winter fruit happening in an endless loop. And what a beautiful transformation.

In that spirit, I wish that all of us would embrace our own transits with tenderness. I know that this year I’ve changed more than words could ever convey, and my love for these wild prairie rose hips is the closest I can come to conveying that feeling.

It feels like: Self-love. Reinvention. Certainty. Fullness.

My darlings, I’m wishing you all the same.

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Photo story: I spotted these rose hips growing wild in Somme Prairie (Illinois), on an expedition with my 11-year botany mentor @thoughtstoodeepfortears. We were looking for #gentians, and we found those as well as a beautiful fly on a Black-eyed Susan cone, these glowing hips, and a connection to the things that require you to crouch down to the earth in order to encounter them.