A Trip to the New York Botanical Garden

A few days ago, my girlfriend Abby and I went to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.  Although living in the city has been fun and constantly exciting, I didn’t realize how much I needed to be surrounded by beautiful flowers and natural areas until we got there (Central Park is great, but it doesn’t cut it for me).  I immediately felt calm and at peace as we started walking through a grove of cherry blossom trees.  Ever since I was a child, the sight and smell of the tiny pink flowers budding on these green giants let me know that spring is here, and that summer is right around the corner.  After stopping to get some photos, Abby and I made our way to the “orchid show”, which was a gigantic greenhouse dedicated to showcasing variations of orchids from around the world and from drastically different ecosystems.  Something we discovered is that there are quite a few orchids that have flowery scents – a fact I hadn’t thought about before and that Abby didn’t think was true beforehand.  I learned that orchids grow everywhere from extremely humid ecosystems like rainforests to harshly arid ecosystems like deserts.  We found ourselves constantly saying, “Oh, I had no idea those were considered orchids!”  Something I thought was super cool was the fact that one of us would point out that certain orchids looked like snakes or bugs, only to read their descriptive labels saying that they used biomimicry to detract the predators that usually stayed away from that kind of prey.

Something unexpected I took away from our trip was how taking pictures with the flowers made me feel beautiful.  I don’t say this in an arrogant way, but rather to highlight that this was something I discovered that I liked.  I always knew I enjoyed flowers for their aesthetics, but I never thought to embrace them in “feminine” ways in pictures (i.e. gentle, welcoming, colorful, etc.).  I attribute this to being socialized as a man in my friend groups, but that’s neither here nor there.  Taking pictures with them let me contextualize myself in “feminine” ways, which I have been trying to explore more and find confidence in.  So, all in all, I learned that orchids and gender expressions are quite alike – they’re all beautiful, they can surprise you in wonderful ways, and there’s really no limit on what they can look like.