benign neglect
my husband is working with a publisher on a manuscript about our families deep immersion into rural languedoc in southern france. he let my 82 year old mom read a recent draft of the manuscript. in the book, he describes me as a “middle child raised with benign neglect.” my mom read it and was kind of hurt. “you were not neglected” she insisted. we tried to lighten the situation by emphasizing the adjective–benign. anyway, to make a long story short, she eventually came back and admitted, after thinking about it some more, that it was indeed the case. i had been more or less lost in the middle, among others that either needed or demanded all of the available attention. so now it’s a family joke. anyway, that is long wind up to explain why i titled this photo of gerbera daisies, slumped as they are by lack of fresh water and attention, benign neglect. worry not, my little peach friends, you will all be stronger for it!
gerbera daisies
As the 4th of 5 kids and a gardener/floral designer, i see a freshness and beauty to the angle of these gerberas that i would never have seen from the front. Like children, they each have a toss and a turn of their own. Maybe it’s the frozen tundra outside my window talking, but beauty on!