The Beauty of Flowers

“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower.  I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”  Georgia O’Keeffe

Flowers are incredible.  They bring beauty and hope to the world. And that is certainly something we need more of now in the world, but especially in America. I appreciate this week’s Lens-Artist Photo Challenge #101—One Single Flower as a prompt to share some of the magnificence of flowers.  To see flowers from all over, visit the other responses to this week’s challenge—you will not be disappointed.

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”   Audrey Hepburn

“The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.”  D. H. Lawrence

“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” A. A.Milne

“Every flower blooms in its own time.”  Ken Petti

“The flower that follows the sun does so even on cloudy days.”   Robert Leighton

“Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.”  Henry Ward Beecher

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”   Luther Burbank

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”  Henri Matisse

“Flowers are the music of the ground, from earth’s lips spoken without sound.”  Edwin Cerran

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”  Oscar Wilde

“I must have flowers, always, always.”  Claude Monet

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.”  Lady Bird Johnson

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small.  We haven’t time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.”  Georgia O’Keeffe

“If we could see the miracle of a flower daily, our whole life would change.”  Buddha

SEARCHING FOR SPRING, PART 6: Lupine, Poppies & More, oh my!

“EARTH LAUGHS IN FLOWERS.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two of my favorite wildflowers are Lupine and California Poppies.  They are both so bold and bright that when they make an appearance, you have to notice them.  A great place to watch for their first appearance each spring is driving I-5 over the Grapevine.  When patches of orange paint the hills, it is time to start exploring the area with more diligence.

A great spot to find a closer view of wildflowers is on the Gorman Post Road, near the top of the Grapevine.  This year was no different, but the poppies were not as evident as usual.  The lupines, however, were flanking the road along with some other colorful blooms.

Fortunately, the California Poppies were taking over the fields en route to the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve State Park.  According to the staff, the east side of the park was where poppies were most likely to be found on its actual grounds. When a friend and I were there on a weekend in early April—as predicted by the staff—it was almost impossible to get into the parking lot and past the entry kiosk.  We chose not to wait at least an hour to be able to look for a parking space, especially since we had already been sitting for close to an hour on the adjacent roads.  I’m really not crazy about crowds.

On a Weekday–Weekends The Cars Would Be Ten Times Worse

These Distant Hills Are Officially Part of the Preserve

The poppies, however, do not simply grow in the Poppy Preserve.  Their audacious color erupts along the roads and throughout the fields in the whole area surrounding the park.  And the poppies are joined by some other blooms as well.

Several Stands of These Pink Trees Were Blooming Along Lancaster Road

If you have not wandered by Gorman and then on Lancaster Road toward the Poppy Preserve, the time to get out there is now.  You will be rewarded with seeing some of the boldest and brightest wildflowers around!

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”    Iris Murdoch

“For myself I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free and spontaneous.”   Edward Abbey

“I must have flowers, always and always.”   Claude Monet

“How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?  Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold.”  William Wordsworth

“Spring is God’s way of saying, ‘One more time!’”   Robert Orben

“It is Spring again.  The earth is like a child that knows a poem by heart.”   Rainer Maria

Finding May Flowers

“Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.”   Thomas Tusser

El Nino promised lots of storms to a drought-ravaged California in 2016.  Although the full force of the expected rains never really arrived, enough rain fell to nudge wildflowers into brilliant eruptions across fields and along roadsides.  I took several drives early in spring, admiring the wildflowers dancing along the route.  I even caught the end of a Megabloom in Death Valley!  Just seeing the vivid and various colors and shapes of the flowers always cheers me, reminding me of my spiritual connection to the world of Nature.  Quite simply, I agree with Luther Burbank:  “Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”    

Every year, I take a several weeks’ long trek into Nature, typically stopping to visit national parks along the way.  This year, I took off on May 3, hoping that I might find wildflowers as I wandered along through several states:  California, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and Arizona.  By May, the flowers were waning along the hills and roadsides near me, but I was hoping the higher elevations I was traveling might let me catch glimpses of flowers wherever I went.

And I was lucky.  I saw flowers everywhere—either wildflowers out in the field or cultivated grounds and gardens in the cities.  I was gone for most of the month and saw flowers every day.  What can I say?  It was a great trip!

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QUOTES ABOUT FLOWERS

“You always have to remember—no matter what you’re told—that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.”   Cyndi Lauper

“Keep love in your heart.  A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”   Oscar Wilde

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.  God is the friend of silence.  See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence.  We need silence to be able to touch souls.”    Mother Teresa

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”    Henri Matisse

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”    Martin Luther

“What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.  These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.”   Joseph Addison

“Earth laughs in flowers.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”   Claude Monet

“In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry.  We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.”    Jonas Mekas

“Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes—every form of animate or inanimate existence leaves its impress upon the soul of man.”   Orison Swett Marden

“It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development.  If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down.  Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers.  So we need them, some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.”   Jane Goodall

“The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.”  Basho

“Spring, when the earth tilts closer to the sun, runs a strict timetable of flowers.”   Alice Oswald

“Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day—like writing a poem or saying a prayer.”   Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”    Pablo Neruda

“I’m an introvert. . . I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.”   Audrey Hepburn

“Change is a continuous process.  You cannot assess it with the static yardstick of a limited time frame.  When a seed is sown into the ground, you cannot immediately see the plant.  You have to be patient.  With time, it grows into a large tree.  And then the flowers bloom, and only then can the fruits be plucked.”   Mamata Banerjee

“Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.”   Walt Whitman

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”   Iris Murdoch

“With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.”  Lope de Vega

“The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms.  Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.”   Auguste Rodin

“I was taught to confront things you can’t avoid.  Death is one of those things.  To live in a society where you’re trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigor and energy.  The fact that flowers don’t last forever makes them beautiful.”   Damien Hirst

“Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.”   Henry Ward Beecher

“Weed are flowers too, once you get to know them.”   A. A. Milne

“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.”   Theodore Roethke

“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”   Jeremy Bentham

“I must have flowers, always, and always.”   Claude Monet

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!  I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”   Edna St. Vincent Millay

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in—what more could he ask?  A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”   Victor Hugo

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment.  I want to give that world to someone else.  Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower.  I want them to see it whether they want or not.”   Georgia O’Keefe

“go sailing away and away, sailing into a keen city which nobody’s ever visited, where always it’s Spring) and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves”   e. e. cummings

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.”   Lady Bird Johnson

“Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.”   Gerald de Nerval

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”   Anais Nin

“What a desolate place would be a world without a flower!  It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome.  Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heaven.”   A. J. Balfour

“In the hope of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.”   Albert Schweitzer

“Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”   Georgia O’Keefe

I guess I am fickle.  My favorite flower tends to be whatever glorious bloom I am admiring at the moment, especially if it surprises me out in a field somewhere.  I do always love to see lupines, lilacs and irises, in part for the good memories they hold.  I’ve written before about agreeing with Alice Walker that “It pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

I bet that is actually true for all flowers, all the little wonders of the natural world!

Lilacs in Montana with a Bit of Snow Lingering from the Previous Night’s Storm

Do you have a favorite flower that always catches your attention, brightens your day, tugs at special memories?