The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Alice would always remember this day as the one that changed her life irrevocably, even though it would take her the next twenty years to understand: life is lived forward but only understood backward. You can't see the landscape you're in while you're in it

life is lived forward but only understood backward. You can’t see the landscape you’re in while you’re in it.

Each flower is a secret language. When I wear a combination of flowers together, it's like I'm writing my own secret code that no one else can understand unless they know my language.

The more she cried, the more Alice believed she really did have some of the sea inside her.

The desert's an old dream of the sea.

I knew you were still in there. Stay, please don't let the wind change.

Life and other people's stories had always told her she was blue. Her father's eyes. The sea. Alice Blue. The color of orchids. Of her boots. Of fairytale queens. Of loss. But Alice's centre was red. It always was. The color of fire. Of earth. Of heart, and courage.

And her light stretches over salt sea equally and flowerdeep fields. Sappho

Alice came upon treasure after treasure: everlasting daisies in pastel pinks and yellows, trails of grey and white feathers, boughs heavy with blossom buds on the gum trees. She breathed in the warm earth and appreciated the sky, a blend of soldier-crab blue and every shade of purple in a pipi shell. The desert's an old dream of the sea.

Alice recalled one of the books Dylan had read to her, a collection of Japanese fairytales. In one, a woman artist practiced kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. There'd been an illustration of a woman bent over a pile of broken pottery pieces, laid out to fit together, with a fine paintbrush in her hand, its bristles dipped in gold. It had enchanted Alice, the idea that breakage and repair were part of the story, not something to be disdained or disguised.

Life is lived forward but only understood backwards. You can't see the landscape you are in while you are in it.

The flowers are waiting to meet you.

Alice wished on feathers and dandelions to be a bird and fly far away into the golden seam of the horizon where the sea was sewn to the sky.

Your instincts will always guide you, like the stars.

Trust yourself. Trust your story. All you can do is tell it true.

pain on the outside softened the sharp feelings inside she couldn’t reach.

Sturt's desert pea Meaning: Have courage, take heart Swainsona formosa | Inland Australia Malukuru (Pit.) are famous for distinctive blood-red, leaf-like flowers, each with a bulbous black centre, similar to a kangaroo's eye. A striking sight in the wild: a blazing sea of red. Bird-pollinated and thrives in arid areas, but very sensitive to any root disturbance, which makes it difficult to propagate.

Her mother was peaceful. She was calm. The sight filled Alice with the kind of green hope she found at the bottom of rock pools at low tide but never managed to cup in her hands. The more time she spent with her mother in the garden, the more deeply Alice understood- from the tilt of Agnes's wrist when she inspected a new bud, to the light that reached her eyes when she lifted her chin, and the thin rings of dirt that encircled her fingers as she coaxed new fern fronds from the soil- the truest parts of her mother bloomed among her plants. Especially when she talked to the flowers. Her eyes glazed over and she mumbled in a secret language, a word here, a phrase there as she snapped flowers off their stems and tucked into her pockets. Sorrowful remembrance, she'd say as she plucked a bindweed flower from its vine. Love, returned. The citrusy scent of lemon myrtle would fill the air as she tore it from a branch. Pleasures of memory. Her mother pocketed a scarlet palm of kangaroo paw.

For Alice, falling in love was noting else but feeling her insides set on fire. The feeling consumed her, as if she'd somehow always known him and had been searching for him just as long. Here he was.

I hope you're well, Alice. Here's to courage. And to heart, right? How about, here's also to the future, and everything it holds. Moss. Alice shook the envelope; a packet of desert pea seeds fell into her palm. 'That looks like some kind of magic,' Sally said. Alice gave her a small smile. 'It is.' She closed her hand around the packet of seeds, feeling their individual shapes and thinking of the color they would grow. To the future.

What plant?' 'Sorry?' "What plant did Mum leave, at the grave?' Sally went to the open window and reached through to pick a peach-colored flower from a blooming bush. She offered it to Alice. 'Beach hibiscus,' Alice cried softly, remembering the flower crown her mother made when she was a child. Remembering its meaning in the Thornfield Dictionary. Love binds us in eternity.

In my family monarch butterflies are daughters of fire. They come from the sun carrying the souls of warriors who fought and died in battle, and return to feed on the nectar of flowers.

Cootamundra wattle Meaning: I wound to heal Acacia baileyana | New South Wales Graceful tree with fern-like foliage and bright golden-yellow globe-shaped flower heads. Adaptable, hardy evergreen, easy to grow. Profuse flowering in winter. Heavily fragrant and sweetly scented. Produces abundant pollen, favored for feeding bees in the production of honey.

Blue pincushion Meaning: I mourn your absence Brunonia australis | All states and territories A perennial found in woodlands, open forests and sand plains. Medium to deep blue flowers usually in spring, in hemispherical clusters on a tall stem. Can be difficult to establish. May die after a few years.

there are always seeds that thread us and carried on the wind set us apart does the wind come from the origins or the mother or the father will my origins be blown away or remain in distance if I leave will the wind stand breathless shall I remain to die broken from home

She pored over the books. Paused to name every sketched and pressed flower aloud, and speak its meaning; an incantation to end the burden of carrying an untold story inside her.

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers... ... take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colors true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She lay in bed watching the winter sky and naming the changing colors- soft navy and lilac to peach and champagne pink- before the sun rose and lit up the red earth.

Around them, the willowy needles of desert oak trees swayed in the pale orange light. Wafts of yellow butterflies fluttered low over acacia and mulga bushes. The crater wall slowly changed color as the sun sank, from flat ochre to blazing red to chocolate-purple. The sun slipped under the dark line of the horizon, glowing like an ember as it threw its last light up into the sky.