Worry-Free Echinacea - Rocky Mountain Gardens, Missoula, Montana

" 'You're not worried?' 

'Worry's for people who think blowing on the dice will change their luck.' " 

-Mike & Charley in One Last Lie, A Mike Bowditch novel by Paul Doiron, p.412 Lg type

Mountain Wildfire Smoke Plume - Near Bitterroot Valley, Montana

Seasonal wildfire smoke once again filters through myriad mountain canyons near Montana's Bitterroot Valley. 

Small Yellow Dahlia (and Bug) - Rocky Mountain Gardens, Missoula, Montana

Meandering through Missoula's Rocky Mountain Gardens, this small yellow dahlia  captured my atention - each petal a perfect tiny scroll, Fibonacci swirled for our delight. (blossoms approx 1.5 inches) Seems the wee bug is a bigger fan, hanging out unfazed through my intrusive camera hovering!

Not Earned - Echinacea / Coneflower - Missoula, Montana

"Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action."

-—Dallas Willard (1935-2013), Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984, 1993, 1999), 194.

Three Days to Shania Twain! - Missoula, Montana

The rigging is going up! We're at the three day countdown to Shania Twain's concert in Missoula, Montana's Washington Grizzly Stadium...let's go girls!

Gold-Fuzzed Bee and Rose - Missoula, Montana,

"It became a game that I took to with immense gusto: to see how much I could remember about dandelions themselves, ... or searching out the smell of the gold-fuzzed bees that hung around our back porch grape arbor. Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers."

– Ray Bradbury, from Just This Side of Byzantium,

An Introduction [to some editions of Dandelion Wine], Summer 1974

(I suppose this quote merited my crouching patiently next to any dandelion bloom peppering the backyard... but this little flier conveniently buzzed at shoulder height, so there you have it. I will pencil in crouching for another day.)

Poppy In Sun - Missoula, Montana

Imagine today's sunshine-loving poppy swaying in a little breeze, humming this snappy silly 1960's surfer song by The Sunrays. 

(You can also hear this ditty at our house - or in our car, or out of doors...- on most any random day the Montana sun breaks through, courtesy of The Best Husband Ever...."Sun, sun, sun, sun...I-aye liiiive... for the suuun...")

Spring Rain Like Kindness - Missoula, Montana

“Kindness, after all, did not distinguish between those who merited it and those who did not. It was like rain, she thought. It fell everywhere and made everything green and new and alive once more. That is what it did.”

-Mma Ramotswe in To the Land of Long Lost Friends, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series, by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 70-71 (lg type)