The Language of Flowers in the Time of COVID: Finding Solace in Zen, Nature and Ikebana

In 2020, as COVID-19 spread from Asia to North America, Zen Buddhist and ikebana practitioner Joan Stamm was forced to cancel her long-anticipated trip to Japan, where she had planned to research a flower temple pilgrimage and learn the deeper meaning of flowers known as “little Buddhas”. But with lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, Stamm, who lives on a mountain on an island in the Salish Sea, sequestered herself like a hermit and turned to her own flower garden for solace and meaning as th...