Fair nature’s priestesses! to whom,
In hieroglyph of bud and bloom,
Her mysteries are told;
Who wise in lore of wood and mead,
The seasons’ pictured scrolls can read,
In lessons manifold!
~Excerpted lines from a poem by
John Greenleaf Whittier

Azaleas – whitest of white!
White as the drifted snow
Fresh-fallen out of the night,
Before the coming glow.
Tinges the morning light;
When the light is like the snow,
White,
And the silence is like the light:
Light, and silence, and snow, –
All – white!
White as an embodied hush;
A very rapture of white;
A wedlock of silence and light:
White, white as the wonder undefiled
Of Eve just wakened in Paradise;
Nay, white as the angel of a child
That looks into God’s own eyes!
~Excerpted lines from a poem by
Harriet McEwen Kimball

Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. ~Ecclesiastes 9:8   ✝

**As you can see from the photo my white azaleas, though very, very, white indeed, do have a bit of a pink in their freckles especially as the age.