Last Light - Missoula, Montana

“And the fairy-light is fleeting ...”

-from The Last Light by Ernest Charles Jones

Spring Of A Poem, Perhaps - Missoula, Montana

"The silence - for the sound of birds and sea adds up to silence as beautifully as we ever know if in the noisy world of today - together with the sweetly moving air, and the scents of thyme and bell-heather and sun-warmed bracken, all combined to distill something very potent. It was the sort of time and place where one might have expected an idea, the spring of a poem, to well up from the quiet and the beauty."
- From The Stormy Petrel, p 102, by Mary Stewart (1916-2014)

Blossoms And Risk - Missoula, Montana

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Anaïs Nin (1903-1977)
(Note: Quote source is iffy, according to this Disputed section in WikiQuote.)

April Showers Bring Maple Flowers - Missoula, Montana

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

- Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Doubt Blossoms - Missoula, Montana

“I don't need you to agree with me," she said quietly. "I'll go away happy with a little bit of doubt. Doubt is good. It's an emotion we can build on. Perhaps if we feed it with curiosity it will blossom into something useful, like suspicion - and action.”

― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

Spring Pinks - Missoula, Montana

"A profusion of pink roses
bending ragged in the rain
speaks to me
of all gentleness and its enduring."
 - from The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams 

Angling for a close in view of ornamental fruit blossoms, I anticipate this year's yet-to-come blowsy peonys and luscious summer roses - in the height of their glories, fragrantly beckoning from half a block away. It's hard to believe it's already June - but all of summer is yet to arrive, ours for the daily taking in. Tis a soul-restoring thing to be out under the vast sky, even just to sit on the front doorstep, reading in a Saturday sunbeam.

Spring Colours - Missoula, Montana

Conventional wisdom of our childhood: Don't talk to strangers. (To which I've been known to retort, 'It doesn't get much stranger than this! Chortle chortle!' Parents are rarely  amused. ) 

But once we're past the naive vulnerability of childhood, it behooves us to glance beyond our busy blinders or societal comfort zone and speak to strangers - a simple smiling hello as you pass on the sidewalk, or a conversational weather comment to your checkout line neighbor.

Call me simplistic, but I t's often the simplest, seemingly small things that make all the difference in our day - positive or negative - and the unknown person next to us is not so very different from you or me. 

A stranger's kindness was offered to me during my Sunday river walk by way of a handful of spring blossoms along with the request, "Just squeeze this, then smell it - and look at the colours. People don't see the colour all around them."  An unconventional yet lovely reminder, well worth the interruption of my best laid plans. 

May your day be disrupted by unexpected loveliness, and may you be an accessory to more of the same.

Lilacs En Route - Missoula, Montana

“I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.” - George MacDonald  (1824-1905)

April Snow - Missoula, Montana

Ahh, spring in Montana!
Just as blossoms lull to thinking it's really time to put away the winter hats, we wake to an April skiff of snow.
Always a surprise, ever a delight.

Fleeting Bloom, Missoula, Montana

Springtime blossoms are among this life's fleeting pleasures of which we are wise to take immediate notice, as their silken petals will all too quickly flutter down like so many resilient snowflakes.

Click here to partake of varied haiku reflections on this year's cherry blossoms.

Onions, Onions - Ha Ha Ha!, Hamilton, Montana

Onion and chive flowers have always pleased my eye for their perfect globular shape, especially when contrasted against darker vertical lines of upright onion stems. Looking closer, you see a world within a world, seeds of tomorrow's harvest hidden in the fading glory of today.