Tasmanian Plants

I have been silent, like the plants I study.

There is no easy way to state this so I state it simply.

Swiftly but surely, my time in Tasmania has come to an end.

Five years I have been in Tasmania, the plant life there has left an indelible mark on my psyche.

Such are the ways of plants. They enter ones awareness in the most unobtrusive of ways. And they leave a void in their absence.

But this void is meant to be.

There can be no one who is touched by the grace of botanical beauty who will fail to strive towards attaining another glimpse of that drunken ecstasy.

The ecstasy of seeing yet another plant that I have never laid eyes upon, smell yet another Christmas mint, see the heath blossoms emerge for yet another year, and yet another year.

Five years in Tasmania. A lifetime of memories. Memories of flowers. Memories of ferns. Memories of trees.

And most of all, memories of the people whom have imparted to me their very own affection for plants, even though they might not have said so in as revealing a fashion.

I will continue to write of the plants of beautiful Tasmania, if only to commemorate the loveliness of her flora, but every post must necessarily now be one written from a great distance – a distance that make the heart grow fonder.