Pasque Flower Progression - Missoula, Montana -

Our neighbourhood pasque flower's 'before and after' are both charming! 

Drop of Hope Blooms - Missoula, Montana

"And even though I no longer really knew what it was, I felt it: a drop of hope. The fog surrounding my life rolled back another inch, and a sliver of blue sky peeked through." -When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, p.135

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...")

Faithful Fall Geranium - Missoula, Montana

My little porch geranium,  still faithfully blooming bright in Missoula, Montana’s cooler fall sunshine.

Sunflower With Light Shining Through - Missoula, Montana

 Extra happiness during a neighborhood ramble at sight of the sunset backlighting the delicacy of  sunflower petals....!

Wild Rose (always my favourite!) - Missoula, Montana

"…suddenly you flare in my sight, / a wild rose blooming at the edge / of thicket, grace and light...

and once more I am blessed, choosing / again what I chose before."

 - from The Wild Rose by Wendell Berry

 

Late Bloomer Reflections - Missoula, Montana

“To doubt everything
  or to believe everything
  are two equally convenient solutions; 
  both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”
   — Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)

 

Thistle Be Gorgeous and Moody - Missoula, Montana

"Josie is a Pye," said Marilla sharply, "so she can't help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don't know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles...."
- from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, Ch. 37

Flying Garden Guests - Missoula, MT

Omigosh - please be distracted with me and go play the June 10, 2018, Google Doodle game!

Airborne garden gnomes and a trebuchet  - what’s not to love?!
(Besides my high score of 811 - & that with the biggest gnome of them all!)
Click here - and kiss the next 20 minutes goodbye....

Now every day can be Gardening Day - and not just in Germany!

Story Bloom - Missoula, Montana

"I hope you will go out 
 and let stories happen to you, 
and that you will work them, 
 water them with your blood 
and tears 
 and your laughter 
till they bloom, 
 till you yourself burst into bloom."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Coneflower Circle Poem - Missoula, Montana

"There are poems hidden in the limbs of the willow
Lines of rhyme flowing from the music of the wren
Sonnets sitting like angels atop clouds resting on hilltops
Waiting to instill those with pen and ink to script lyrics to enlighten
There are triolets among the petals of coneflowers, pink, red and yellow..."

- from Will There Be Poems? By William A. Poppen

Barred Blossoms - Missoula, Montana

"The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry for August 18, 1831

Through The Fence - Missoula, Montana

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." 

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Sunkissed - Missoula, Montana

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.” - C.S. Lewis, from Is Theology Poetry? (London: Geoffrey Bless, 1962),164-165.

Read the larger context of this quote (click the hyperlink) from a paper given to The Oxford Socratic Club , in which "Lewis sets out to answer the question, Is the imagination of followers of Jesus so aroused and satisfied by the poetry of the Gospel message that they have mistaken intellectual assent for mere aesthetic enjoyment?"