Hello, friend.
My name is Florrie. Thank you for being here.

I am an april-born daydreamer, a quiet-talker, and rabbit-hearted girl. I'm an enthusiast of handwritten letters,
If this is your first visit, it’s lovely to meet you. This is my personal website. My name is pronounced /Flo-hee/; I am a girl of french-portuguese descent. My pronouns are she/her/hers, and I am in my late-twenties. I hope you consider adding the website to your bookmarks, so you may return and read new little blossoms shared in the future. secret gardens, old music boxes, overgrown cottages, forgotten journals, and all things which can collect and safekeep memories. I currently work as an early-childhood educator, and during my free time I enjoy reading poems, picking flowers, drinking tea, daydreaming, painting, listening to orchestras, and writing about everything I have learnt.

This is my little corner of the web. If any of this sounds interesting to you, you might enjoy it too. Feel free to explore and come back whenever you wish.

About Me:
I was born mid-April, at the perfect time to watch the flower blossoms unfurl, and my mother named me Florrie. Maybe that's why I feel at my happiest when I am surrounded by warm sunlight, barefoot upon the grass. Since I was a little girl, I have delighted in the company of books, flowers and teapots.
Things I love: Birds singing in the early morning. Chamomile tea. Claude Monet paintings. Flowers that grow against all odds in harsh places. Watching clouds float across the sky. Public libraries. Oversized cardigans. Reading books while sitting by a window. Evenings at the ballet with my friends. Lavender perfume. Raindrops tapping gently on the rooftiles. Receiving handwritten letters. Nurturing plants into flourishing. Old music boxes with twirling ballerinas inside. Old photographs of family members. The scent of rain in the air. Barefoot dancing. Gentlemen that open doors for you. The full moon in a clear night. The pages of a well-worn journal.Growing up an only child, I spent my childhood playing in gardens, imagining myself as a courageous princess of a forgotten land. My mornings began with sponge cake and chamomile tea sweetened with honey, my afternoons were filled with great imaginary adventures, and my evenings were a miscellany of fairytale books read beneath the starlight. Since then, I have dreamt of creating for myself a life that is equally peaceful and enchanting.

As an adult, I work in early-childhood education. I am currently a researcher of children’s literature as a tool for psychological and pedagogical development, which is just another way of saying that I read fairytales for a living. Ultimately, my aspiration for this life is to dwell in its embrace, adorned with a child-like sense of wonder, each day unto itself, in hopes of enjoying the fleeting pleasures that are hidden in all the quiet little moments. I am simply a very romantic person; not as the world understands romance today, but in the old-fashioned sense. That is, I tend to see the world through a rose-coloured perspective and I try to find beauty in the quotidian. I love sharing all the little wonders I observed, and that is the reason I write: in this little website, in my journals, academically, and everywhere else I am able.

About this Website:
I created this space after deciding to leave traditional social media, seeking somewhere I could write freely about things that brought me delight: lessons that I learnt about living, places that I visited, words that inspired me, practices that brought me peace, Colophon: This website is handcoded in windows notepad and hosted by ichi. It has a single html file. It uses the #anchor suffix to organise its content. The marginalia structure follows the tufte css model. The baroque flower illustrations are designed by ekachaka and hosted externally in imgur. The main text is displayed in averia serif libre and the marginalia in playwrite canada, under the open font license.and all sorts of inspirations found within the quotidian. I call these writings my ‘little blossoms’, and this website is a kind of digital garden. My hope for this space is to slowly gather a treasure chest of memories. Upon future retrospection, they will allow me to revisit the moments that gently shaped my being, and all the lovely things I sought to surround myself with. I have always believed that life's simplest moments are its truest treasures, and by preserving them, we keep our past alive and make the present a little more meaningful. Sometimes, this place also feels like a refuge. When I lose myself amidst the haste of life, I return here to be reminded of what truly matters. To me, this site feels safe and heartening, and I hope it might offer you some kind of comfort, too.

This is a now page. It was last updated in June of 2025.
Here are some things I am currently devoting my attention to:

Delighting in: Empty journals with promising blank pages
Paying attention to: The consolation found in the moral of a fairytale
Spending time on: Discovering new habits and improving at old ones
Listening to: The chirps from a bird nest outside my bedroom window
Indulging in: Blueberry and coconut pavlova with white chocolate
Visiting: The children's literature section of the public library
Practicing: Listening to the language of birds, making an inventory of sounds
Looking forward to: The blessing of experiences I am yet to know

Latest Status:

Blossomed in 2025:

01 06 2025  ‍ ‍ ‍ ‍ ‍ ‍A Sun-Warmed Elegy for a Friendful Garden Tree

If you are reading this, I would be overjoyed to hear from you! I am available for assignments, secret-admirer confessions and casual conversation.

✉ ‍ ‍ ‍ You can write me at dearflorrie (at) gmail (dot) com

It might take me a couple days, but all the messages will always be checked, cared for, and answered with lots of love.

You may also be interested in visiting:
⋅ My Notebook: Where I collect assorted quotes as sources of inspiration for my future writing; for this website, for my journals, and everything else.
⋅ My Status Café: Where I share short and simple status updates, for both the major life events and the daily little happenstances.

I have this clear memory of the moments before I opened the classroom door on my first day working as a teacher. I was holding my notebooks tightly to my chest, my left hand hovering over the handle with trembling fingers and my heart beating like a bolero. I remember telling myself: "This is the sum of everything you worked for. This is the moment where the life of your dreams begins." But life has a way of transfiguring plans into surprises. ↶ Mary Oliver wrote: "Someone I once loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift." Sometimes the path forward is hidden in the understanding of what we cannot bear to be. To wear down the edges of the spirit is painful, but it might be a necessary erosion to reveal the core within. What lay ahead wasn’t fulfilment, but a short-lived chapter in an environment that wore down the edges of my spirit, revealing to me, above all else, the type of teacher that I did not ever want to become. When I look at it in retrospect it's almost amusing. I was trying, quite desperately, to write out the novel my life as though each decision and every choice had led me directly into that place, like a carefully-written romance. I thought that I would look back with tenderness, seeing the turning point where everything aligned. But it wasn’t. Life, as I have learned, rarely unfolds so neatly.

This was a habit which I subconsciously I carried with me for years. As a girl, every accomplishment was attributed the purpose of bringing me closer to the grown-up I was inevitably fated to become. The first pair of bar shoes with small clicking heels. The first sweep of red ink across a school notebook. The first train ride without supervision and the wide world opening itself for discovery outside the window. In adolescence, it deepened. Each diary entry about a first kiss was written as the beginning of the perfect love story
"We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience / In a different form." I would someday recount to our children. I believed my life was a novel, with its story slowly revealed in thoughtfully written chapters. And, by consequence, I was always waiting for the next page to reveal a hidden meaning about the previous. I envisioned myself as the heroine, constantly striding forward, always having perfect awareness of where I had been and exactly where I was going. But, with time, I started to notice that life doesn’t bend neatly into perfectly divided chapters. It sprawls and repeats itself, leaves pages blank, and abandons stories mid-verse. And when I found myself as an adult who couldn’t force it to be something it wasn’t, I began to wonder if I had lost the thread of my own story.

The emptiness I felt stemmed from my attempt to erase all the messiness. The contradictions between who I envisioned myself to be and the mistakes I actually made, the characters who entered and left my life without closure, the meticulously planned life changes that promised new beginnings and then led nowhere. Literature has long taught us to see life through the lens of a classic dramatic arc:↶ The dramatic arc is a classic literary structure created by Freytag and rooted in Aristotle’s Poetics. This structure is the reason we often expect each troublesome situation we face to have a cathartic climax that resolves itself in a denouement where the character (ourselves) is victorious and a life lesson is learnt. But, in real life, growth is not a linear ascent, it is a root tendril seeking moisture in dark soil, a branch yielding to the wind. Real life is a wild practice. A new situation arises, tension grows within it, it reaches a peak, then all subsides and a lesson is learnt. And, by consequence, it’s in these terms that we also frame our inner narratives. They are the measurement we use to attribute to our lives a personal sense of progression and emotional growth. But they also entangle us in expectations and self-assumptions. I reached a point where this perception of my life felt limiting and unrealistic. I felt a necessity to escape through the margins of my own story. But, fortunately, stories are not bound to having a single shape. They can meander, repeat themselves rhythmically, and divide themselves into verses. And these are the stories I always loved most. I came to the conclusion that I wanted my life to be something else, something untamed and free. My life was a poetry book, not a novel.

A poem doesn’t owe you clarity.
"I dwell in possibility /
a fairer house than prose."It doesn’t bend to the will of explanation or tie itself neatly at the beginning and the end. Instead, it moves in its own quietude, leaving pauses where the breath catches and the unsaid whispers secretively. When I started to perceive my life as a poetry book, I let go of the need for certainty, the craving for answers shaped into closed circles. I stopped demanding that every moment be a ladder to somewhere brighter, or that every turn be a declaration of triumph or defeat, each wrapped with a lesson like a bow. Instead, I linger. I allow the shoes to remain shoes, the kisses just kisses. I let the lines spill out spontaneous words, reversing all my anticipated syntaxes. ↶ To see the thing as the thing, freed from the burden of symbol or future promise. Not categorized, but lived. Ultimately, I think that to live well is to pay dear attention to the uncategorized, authentic moment; the poem of the present, incessantly being written. Some pages present me with restfulness, others beauty, loneliness, and gratitude. None greater or lesser than the next. There are occasions of happiness and disappointment, but they don't represent my full selfhood, only brief moments in time. When you define your life by way of a single narrative, its outcome will come to define you. And I do not want to live a life made to be categorised, I only want it to be authentic and well-lived.

First of all, you must begin with stillness. I don’t mean the absence of motion, but the quieting of your inner compass. That little voice that consistently reminds you of your next step, demanding you to keep moving. Feel the cool air, thick with the scent of damp earth and bruised greenery, and let it settle on your skin. Notice how it carries the whispers of unseen things: decaying leaves, hidden fungi, little stones cooling under the shade. ↶ In one of my favourite essays, Upstream, Mary Oliver describes her experience of getting lost in the woods as a child. She mentions that, instead of being frightened, she felt wondrously enthralled by it, captured by “the sense of going toward the source”. She describes nature as an ingathering of living beings, with unique temperaments: “One tree is like another, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether.” Her essay ends with a call for the reader to now teach others how to explore the outside world. Following her instructions, I decided to write my own little text, in an attempt to gather all the knowledge about the woods that I have acquired in my personal explorations.This air is the first breath of your walk. Inhale it deeply, letting it displace that nagging atmosphere of anticipation you carried in. The woods existed before your arrival and will exist equally after your departure. Remind yourself that your presence is just a temporary note briefly joining in this very ancient song.

Resist the calling of the beaten path. Every well-worn trail, clear and accessible, promises ease in your journey. It pulls you like a magnet. Step away from it. Let your feet find the yielding softness of untouched moss, the uneven terrain beneath the leaf fall of the previous season. Understand that a tangle of thorny vines is not a barrier intentionally placed for your frustration, it's simply a thicket living its own green narrative. Go around its edges, feeling the snag of a bramble on your sleeve. This, too, is a tactile reminder of your otherness. Or do push through, if you wish, snapping the dry twigs to create your own sounds in the quiet. Just remember that neither choice is a success nor a detour. It is merely movement within the open space.

Now, listen to the sounds of silence. You may hear the soft rattle of the oak leaves clinging to a high branch, the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker, or the sudden explosion of bird wings startled by your footsteps. These sounds are not omens to decipher, because they do not exist for your understanding. They are the sounds of the woods existing freely. Here, you should try to let the spaces between them fill your own quiet, now that the voice of your inner compass is finally calm. You can do this if you hold this silence with care, recognising that it is not made of emptiness, but of a gently hidden presence that welcomes you into its home, trusting that you will treat it with reverence.


“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.” Your next challenge will be to deflect the searching gaze. In this day and age, your eyes are trained for seeing beautiful vistas and landmarks, and they will scan the canopy for this promised overlook. Bring them down. Instead, you should try to find the intricate hidden world at your feet: the frost-ferns etched onto a single brown leaf, already dissolving in a weak sunbeam. Pick up a river-smooth stone, cool and heavy, with its history written in water, not words. Watch the dust motes dancing in a shaft of light that unexpectedly pierces through the gloom. These are not distractions from your journey, they are the reasons you are making it in the first place. Linger without an agenda. The summit cares nothing for your arrival: it endures, completely indifferent.

By now, you should start feeling the weight you carried in with you slowly dissolving. Your invisible burdens: schedules, worries, the mental hastening of time, all cling to you like inconvenient cobwebs. These woods are not going to carry them for you, but they will help you shift your focus on the immediate: the softness of mud underfoot after it rained, the pine resin released as you brush a low branch, the cool dampness seeping through your clothes where you leaned against a mossy trunk. ↶ I am not proud of how dependent I have become of the technologies of today, which seek to provide a constant sense of placement and belonging. The practice of walking in the woods has been one of the most efficient ways of breaking out of this shelterage. It can be daunting and intimidating, and aknowledging this is a fundamental part of the experience. Discomfort is not something to be conquered, but another presence to be witnessed. When you understand this, fretfulness falls away amongst the burdens and anxieties. Soon, they become trivial in the face of presentness. The weights don't disappear, but they become momentarily irrelevant against the hereness of root, rock, and light.

Or, maybe, it’s the opposite: you feel a little disoriented and overwhelmed. This, too, you should embrace. The trail blurs into a confusion of deer tracks. Shadows lengthen and twist the familiar trees into grotesque sentinel figures. The old voice of your inner compass whispers to you again and tightens your chest saying: You are lost. This is the threshold of your journey. Do not claw for the map, the phone, the lifeline to certainty. Stand still. Breathe the air that tastes of moisture and vitality. Look at everything around you without seeking an exit sign. Tell yourself: You are not lost, you are within. Turn towards the sound of wind blowing through some branches you hadn't noticed before. Make peace with being the guest of an everchanging host.

And, lastly, release the subconscious expectation of finding a big revelation at the end of the path. The journey is nearing its closure. The walk was the entirety. The satisfying crunch of pine needles under your heel, the fleeting glimpse of a little fox's tail vanishing into green, the pleasant ache in your
“I come into the peace of wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought / of grief. I come into the presence of still water. / And I feel above me the day-blind stars / waiting with their light. For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."thighs from climbing a rise. These were not steps toward understanding a hidden meaning, they are complete sensations, and they are sufficient. Maybe you’ll turn the experience into beautiful art: heartfelt prose, a beautiful painting, a solemn poem. Maybe you won’t. Either way, the stream you found offers cool water for your hands and the sound of its own passage. Drink it.

The return is simply a pivot. Turn your body. The path unwinds differently now, the familiar shapes are made strange by the angle of the late afternoon sunlight. Carry back only tangible souvenirs: grit beneath your nails, the faint scent of cedar woven into your clothes, the memory of cold stones in your palm. The woods gift you only footsteps unburdened by purpose. The final instruction is this: walk not to find, but to forget the need for finding. Let the ground receive you, moment by unmeasured moment. By now, you should have understood that the time of your arrival on the other side is irrelevant. Your journey there, and the things you'll notice along the way, are everything.

It is the morning of my birthday and the gloomy mantle is finally slipping from the shoulders of the world. A green haze, gentle but determined, is appearing along the twigs. The air smells of new possibilities, honey dewdrops and fresh grass. ↶ Mid-April arrives, stubborn as the first daffodil pushing through the frost, and with it, my own turning: twenty-eight springs counted now. Celebrating a birthday in the heart of spring has its own antinomies. Outside my window, the world is drunk on possibility. The trees, reckless with blossom, shower the damp grass in a confetti of petals. Inside, the usual uncertainties of growing old and falling behind rumble within. This year, I do not want them to be antonymous. The world insists on joy anyway. I am learning how to use it as a vitaliser for my own unfolding.It’s wonderful how spring arrived without any announcement, it is simply here once again. And as I watch the heart of my garden softening from my writing desk’s window, I am filled with the desire to think about spring. Both the springs of this world and the springs of living.

I have been noticing the voices that speak from the ink of printed pages and the glare of computer screens. They tell of milestones, achievements stacked tall and names carved on shiny trophies. At twenty-eight, my hands hold few of them. No glistening medal bears my name. No ledger lists my contributions in the expected ink. I notice these voices stride a visible path toward a distant peak. I stand slightly apart. While everyone admires the mountain summit, my attention remains on the flower fields blossoming down here in the valley.

This spring, I feel a curious lightness blossoming within. It does not arise from defiance, but not from indifference either. It feels like a snowdrop stem pushing through the last crust of frost. The expectations of the world lie like heavy stones scattered on the ground. Yet, I feel no urge to lift them. I walk around their inert forms. The sudden, piercing blue of a bird’s wing against the awakening woods pulls my attention entirely. It feels so comfortable here.
"There is the same difference between a person’s talk of spring and spring itself as there is between a dried flower in a botanist’s portfolio and the same flower living outside his window. One is an athenaeum; the other is a living spirit."

The witnessing of this unfolding feels very important to me. Noticing the branches transforming into pale-green limbs overnight requires my attention. Standing perfectly still as the first bumblebee stumbles between early blooms in the April sun demands my patience. The world blooms extravagantly yet spontaneously. It follows no planning. It obeys a deep, earthly-guided rhythm. This diligent attendance, this deep noticing, has felt like a vital practice lately.

I am learning through observance. This blossoming has been revealing itself as a sluggish unfurling: it happens petal by patient petal. It lives in the small attentions paid and in the daily devotions carried. It taught me that the sweetness of the first blushing flower has a meaning, and the way light falls gold and liquid on the pond at dusk holds a lesson. My study is this act of seeing, naming, and holding of moments in the cupped hands of my attention.

Most especially, I have noticed how the sloe buds have remained closed tight, like hard little knots clenched against the lingering cold. From here, it almost ↶ I am truly a late-bloomer. Maybe not in the way the world understands blooming today, but in the sense of the flower that only appears once it’s certain of its bearing fruit. Ultimately, I am still learning to abandon the notion that effort is only meritorious when it's accompanied by a mensurable fruition. looks like they are guarding a secret. They show no concern that the daffodils next to them have already flung wide their yellow trumpets. They simply stand in their own invisible confidence, knowing that the rising of the sun cannot be rushed. I have spent a long time admiring them from this window. I feel a certain kinship between us. Maybe my own buds feel closed tight too.

The sloe buds teaches to let others keep their own measuring. Let them tally their visible gains. My ledger fills differently. The twirling movement of the returning birds draws curious little shapes upon it. The peaty smell of earth finally free of frost scents the pages. With this, I began telling myself: Forced blossoming yields only hollow flowers. Mine will come when the roots find enough depth. It will come when the inner season aligns with the outer light. It will be its own shape, its own colour. I'm a wilder blossom, finding my form.
"What is the life that one should be found worthy of it? Only this: to sit still, and listen, and know that the grass is growing. To feel the light lengthen. To be the garden and the gardener."

Spring is here once again. I am still learning how to blossom. Only, this time, I am not writing an almanac of the schedule. There is no haste. The sunlight lengthens across my garden. Spring still sings that same familiar hymn. Something tender surges within. Something persistent reaches. Something undeniable prepares to blossom. This is enough. In fact, this is everything. This April, I will tend to the garden within. The work itself, I learn, is wonder.