Robust Fennel

Along my daily walks, what is not covered by grasses is carpeted with wild fennel. I love watching its annual rebirth, the new feathery growth emerging amidst last year’s depleted stalks. I’ve been trying for weeks to capture Its fragility and feminine delicacy in the right light. In its robustness and sensuality, fennel is the epitome of coming back to life, and a model for my own recovery from pain and grief. 

“To come out and meet the world again is to heal from isolation, from grief, from illness, from the power and traumas that first robbed us … of a vital sense of presence in the world; to be robust again is to leave the excuses we have made not to risk ourselves and to find ourselves alive once more in the encounter.”

—David Whyte, Consolations.