This trio of purple echinacea flowers, growing in Honora’s garden in Santa Rosa, reminds me of a 17th Century Flemish still-life painting with its dark background, decaying petals, and a house fly intruding into the scene. It’s obviously not as elegant, complex, or detailed but many Northern Renaissance still-lifes symbolized the brevity and the ephemeral nature of life using plates of decaying fruit and bouquets of wilted flowers often covered with flies. I thought it was interesting that the fly was drawn to the one dying flower.
