Let me get this out of the way first, because I'm still a little outraged about it: This flower is technically considered a weed. People spray it. On purpose. To get rid of it. Sigh. Look at her. Look at her. Electric purple-and-white filaments going every direction at once, like she stuck her finger in a socket and decided she liked it. A jade-green pinwheel of stamens balanced in the middle, every arm freckled like a bird's egg. A speckled dark eye at the very center, looking right back at you. The whole thing is a little tribal, a little tropical, a little outer-space - and a lot like my hair on a hot, humid Missouri day. I went in close on this one. Stacked the focus so every speckle and stripe held sharp, because I wanted to put you right at the heart of her and let you see what I see: a flower so unapologetically strange and so unapologetically itself that calling her a weed is honestly a compliment to weeds. I think this is what bothers me about the whole weed designation, really. A weed is just a plant somebody decided was inconvenient. It's a label that says more about the labeler than the labeled. Some of the most extraordinary things grow where nobody planted them, and refuse to behave, and bloom anyway. I see her on a clean white wall in a modern space. Big. Framed. Impossible to ignore. Loud, in the way that the best art is loud - by being so completely itself that the room has to organize around it. Now that you see more, call her a weed. I dare you.