Living with Asthma: My World of Flowers

This is a lovely photograph for those of you who enjoy gardening, shabby chic, the country look, and yes, for those of you who like me have a fascination with flowers, moreover, with daisies! I like all kinds of flowers, including wild flowers. As a child I had first loves in the holy flower kingdom: My first love was a certain large purple orchid. Later, I discovered jasmines, Chinese honeysuckle at my maternal Grandmother's house, near the house where my grandparents lived at a time there was a small front garden with pink and white carnations, and I fell in love with those, too.

I was inspired by a flower I called the Carolina, a myrtle, a puff duster myrtle, and this flower is native to the tropics, and is very famous in Australia. The red myrtle such as the hairbrush myrtle came along later on. There was the grand plumeria and for those living in the tropics, such as in Hawaii, you are familiar with it. I had the pink plumeria in the front lawn at my maternal grandparents' house. I used to 'pick' all pink flowers. Violets are special in my life, and there is the Tenerife Teide violet, a unique violet and one of fragrance. One finds the Parma violet in Italy and in the south of France, and its perfume is very costly.

I am in love with flowers, but now flowers are not my friends, for so many of them produce asthma in me: jasmines, hibisci, myrtle, and I sneeze and freeze ... I feel the itching of skin rash that reproduce, and I sneeze and wheeze at the site of a mango tree, tomato plants, and eucalyptus plant, myrtle, hibisci, and so forth. I ask, is this allergic reaction fair to one who adores the world of nature? I enjoy paper flowers such as paper lilies dearly, and the tissue paper flowers that I used to purchase in Mexico. There are alternatives in life and I settle for second best in regard to the emotional ordeal of having to distance myself from certain flowers. I cannot consume herbal teas due to a particular ingredient, hibiscus. This brings about severity in asthma which I recently discovered, as recent as one year ago.

I enjoy flowers that produce massive reactions in me, but I enjoy these flowers through varied sources: botany books, flora books, paper flowers, soft tissue flowers, printed flowers in dishes, and through the memories of a young girl who enjoyed the world of flowers, a gift she inherited through her father who always brought flowers home to her and through the genetic prime of her paternal grandmother who adored the flowers of her native North Africa. Thank you for passing on to me the beauty of the world of flowers despite allergens that affect me. I have learned to stay away from certain flowers, but in my heart, like my gardenia loving father used to say, 'All flowers are beautiful.' Thank you for such a fine gift from nature's own 'imperfetion.' Thank you, Julia. Today, your great-grandaughter, Julie, also inherited the gift you passed on to me, a fascination with all flowers!