Tag Archives: Daffodil

1440. I’d rather have flowers on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~Edited quote by Emma Goldman

by

35

Natalie, Natalie ever so merry,
how does your garden grow?
With pinks and stock,
as well as tulips and hyacinth,
and a teeny, tiny daffodil.

Screen Shot 2018-01-14 at 5.08.08 PM.png

But wait, it’s January! It’s wintertime! And tomorrow night may bring bitter cold temps with freezing rain or sleet and snow into north central Texas. So how can it be that her garden grows anything at all right now? Well, you see there’s a table out here in Natalieworld that’s reserved for such things. So how does that work? Is it a lipped table laden with dirt like a flower pot? No, no, no, but there’s the grocery store where she shops, and this time of year, they sell little pots that have already been planted with bulbs and she buys flowers every Sunday because little Natalie Scarberry, like Claude Monet, “must have flowers, always, always” be they cut flowers or bulbs in pots.

Screen Shot 2018-01-14 at 5.14.09 PM.png

For those of you who are new to my blog or for those of you who may have forgotten, Natalieworld is the part of our house that we added onto the back of the garage for my mother when she could no longer live alone. It connects to the main part of the house only through a small hallway that leads to the laundry room in one directions and the kitchen in the other direction, and so there is a distinct sense of privacy about it. After Mom passed away, I thought  since it would make a bigger master bedroom and bath, James and I might want us to move out here from our bedroom in the main part of the house. But he said no; he wanted me to have it as a studio for all my creative endeavors. So out went Mom’s furniture and in came new desks and file cabinets and book cases and two recliner rocking chairs–et voilà, a marvelous studio complete with big windows and a French door looking out on my back yard with its greenhouse, numerous flower beds, bird houses and feeders. Now as my 3 grandchildren have grown and spent time with me out here they’ve all declared that one day they too will have a Natalieworld of their own.

Screen Shot 2018-01-14 at 5.15.36 PM.png

“What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look upon it as imprisonment, and would rend the air with their shrieks if condemned to such a life. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so easily. I believe I should always be good if the sun always shone, and could enjoy myself very well in Siberia on a fine day. And what can life in town offer in the way of pleasure to equal the delight of any one of the calm evenings I have had this month sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, with the perfume of young larches all about, and then moon hanging low over the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound in its peace by the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls?” ~Elizabeth von Arnim

Screen Shot 2018-01-14 at 5.10.52 PM.png

…make it your ambition to lead a quiet life…and work with your hands… ~Excerpts from Thessalonians 4:11 ✝

**All photos taken today by Natalie

1291. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered at times over the garden… ~Excerpted and adapted line by Henri-Frédéric Amiel

by

18

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.26.01 PM.png

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. ~Rose G. Kingsley

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.25.30 PM.png

And at no season, save perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as we find in October and November when a cooler version of summer is in effect in Texas. ~Edited and adapted quote by Rose G. Kingsley

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.24.41 PM.png

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud and too hot. ~Edited and adapted line by Lin Yutang

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.29.48 PM.png

So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. ~Lin Yutang

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.30.16 PM.png

Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. ~Lin Yutang

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.27.14 PM.png

It knows the limitations of life and its content. ~Lin Yutang

Screen Shot 2016-11-05 at 6.37.02 PM.png

Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding? ~Job 12:12  ✝

**All photos taken by me in my yard today. The yard may not has as many blooms now as the riotous days of its early splendor, but it has more than enough to keep feeding my soul.

334. There is a place in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. ~Elizabeth Lawrence

by

18

In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there.
To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe.
I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels.
~Dodinsky

Image

A fellow blogger recently wrote about the garden of her childhood and at the end her post she asked her readers if they, too, remembered a garden from their childhood. And though I do, mine wasn’t just a single garden, it was garden after garden after garden because I grew up in Southern California which is a garden in and of itself. Simply put I remember flowers at every turn, colors at every turn, and fragrances everywhere; so amazing were they that more than half a century later, they are as vivid and fragrant as ever. Also my grandmother and my mother’s sister who lived in Texas where we visited almost every summer loved flowers and had lovely gardens of their own. So for me the answer to Annette’s question is a resounding yes, yes, yes.

Today while I was at the nursery buying fertilizer for the lawn, the first plant I saw (the bougainvillea below) was one that grows all over Southern California and sometimes so wild and unrestrained that it covers rooftops. So I decided to make photos from the nursery along with some of my favorite garden quotes as an answer to her question and an offering to you.

Image

The garden is a long son, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.
~Jeff Cox

Image

To this day, I cannot see a bright daffodil,
a proud gladiola, or a smooth egglant
without thinking of Papa.
Like his plants and trees,
I grew up as a part of his garden.
~Leo Buscaglia

Image

As a gardener, I’m among those who believe
that much of the evidence of God’s existence has been planted.
~Robert Brault

Image

A garden really lives  only insofar as it is an
expression of faith, the embodiment of hope, and a song of praise.
~Russell Page

Image

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!

295. Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man, color is the holiest, the most divine… ~John Ruskin

by

3

In the house of words was a table of colors.
They offered themselves in great fountains,
and each poet took the color he needed:
lemon yellow or sun yellow,
ocean blue or smoke blue,
crimson red, blood red, wine red.
~Eduardo Galeano

Image

What a glorious tangerine and white dream is the daffodil in the photograph, and holiness indeed is written all over it!  As God speaks to mankind through the Bible and Creation, we can see that He values color, the intent of which seems, like all else, to be that its hallowed voice draw His children closer to Him.  Color appears first in holy writ in the opening pages of Genesis when God fathered the whiteness of light on day 1 of the Creation story.  Then on the second day the Lord created expanses to separate water from water, and both the sky and the reflection of the heavens in it are shades of blue.  On day 3 He created earth’s green vegetation.  Day 4 brought the placement of lights that governed the heavens, and day’s greater light, the sun, is yellow; up close pictures of the sun also show reds and oranges in its make up.  Fish and great sea monsters swam the seas and birds took flight on the fifth day, and whales and sharks have been seen as hallmarks of an ancient pagan idol symbolized by the color orange.  The sixth day brought the creation of man and animals; the name Adam means red and the blood that courses through the veins of man and beast alike is red.  Day 7, the Sabbath, was sanctified by God whose robes and glory are perennially symbolized by white, and later when atoning for man’s sins His son, Jesus, wore a purple robe.

“And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.  God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.  Genesis 1:30-31  ✝

280. Spring, you put a spell on me and you make me feel like dancing… ~Edited and adapted excerpt of lyrics by Vincent, Poncia Jr./Leo Sayer

by

20

Happy days are here again!
The skies above are clear again!
So let’s sing a song of cheer again!
Happy days are here again!
~Excerpted lyrics by Milton Ager/Jack Yellen

Image

Image

Okay, so it’s not really spring yet, at least not according the the calendar, but springy things sprang up in my greenhouse yesterday.  As a result melodies, not just from the birds, filled the air, and indeed it was an occasion for dancing.  I didn’t care what the neighbors might think about an old lady jumpin’ around like a madwoman, it was definitely time for some singin’ and a little jig.  Why?  Well after weeks of waiting tulips were blooming, a daffodil had opened up, and the first bee of the season had found its way inside to sup on the nectar in my little grape hyacinths.  I don’t know about you, but that’s a formula for springtime in my book.  And every time beauty and miracles like that emerge from seemingly nothingness, I fall in love all over again with the Creator of the Universe.  What amazing things He has made and given to us, we creatures who are often so undeserving of His gifts and His grace!  Now that’s love, is it not?!

He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth, keeping covenant in steadfast love with your servants who walk before you with all their heart.  ~2 Chronicles 6:14  ✝