I had so much making this piece! Thank you to Mr. Fluevog for selecting me as a finalist.

 Please vote here:

https://www.fluevog.com/community/fluevog-creative/voting-booth/

What I wrote for my submission Should I stay or should I go?

It is summer, and blackberries and raspberries are blooming and coming to fruit in my yard. The heady scent of all all of my garden, the bees and birds, insects and rainfall, reminded me of a particular passage from Jane Eyre, in the midsummer moment along antique walls, birds, moths, and cigar smoke, Jane and Mr. Rochester meet among the flowers and confess their love for one another eventually:

“Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is–I know it well–it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar. I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee.”

Jane is the embodiment of blooming and almost bursting desire. Will she run or will she stay? Her shoes will help her anywhere she needs to go, if her heart and mind tell them to.

Each of these flowers is hand sewn, quilled, or cut in a variety of papers and watercolor.

Can one also tell I happen to listen to The Clash a lot when I am working?