A reader recently asked Matt whether he has ever painted baskets of fruit.

Matt responded that he enjoys painting flowers, because they feed his soul, whereas fruit feeds only his stomach.

Following this post, another reader fancifully commented that any human being would naturally prefer fruit to flowers, but animals would prefer flowers to fruit.

Matt responds:

I can see where fruit would win the day with humans, because we could eat it and it would sustain us as a life-saving part of our material world.

But I also see where flowers would sustain the spiritual side of our souls.As an undertaker, I find that people in our culture express love and grief by sending flowers.  Flowers have a great manifestation to the spirit.

Animals, having a great magnetism towards flowers, remind me of my Great Dane.  We had Great Danes as kids growing up for many decades, and they all loved to go into the fields and run like crazy, wild horses, enjoying all the flowers, the grass, the greenery...  It seemed like they were in their element.

In Ireland, I’m surrounded by farms, so my neighbors are the cows, the sheep, and the horses, the foxes, the birds, all kinds of insects and crawling creatures and other animals of every sort.

So the flowering earth probably does appeal much more to the animals that a paved street or a concrete driveway.  In that way I can see why one would be more attractive to an individual of our species, and another would be more attractive to the other species that inhabit this planet.

Thanks for your observation.  I’m sure many of us will keep painting flowers, and many of us will keep painting fruit.  Thank God there aren’t contests where we have to declare ourselves for one or the other!

Matt