Tag Archives: Ethereal

1206. Pluviophile (n) a lover or rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.

by

14

Okay for those who sang “rain, rain go away; come again another day,” I’m here to say that the time for the “other day” has come. The need is HERE; the need is NOW; the need is RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE! For it is and has been hot, hot, hot and getting hotter; and the ground is dry, dry, dry and getting dryer by the day. So come, come lovely gray clouds filled with wetness for there’s plenty of room above us since there are and have been for months nothing but vast, empty expanses of blue overhead. Come and fall; fall, fall, fall luscious, life-giving rains-cooling, refreshing, drenching, dancing, rains! You are welcome here, oh so welcome here! I can and will try to do a rain dance if that would help, but perhaps you will consider this poem below enough of an invitation to come back to our piece of the prairie instead.

Screen Shot 2016-07-23 at 7.27.24 PM.png

From the Diary of A Pluviophile
It’s raining.
Every green is young
Every flower is resplendent
Every cloud is impregnated.
With the sky kneeling down
In the horizon.
Smelling the earth.
As the drops coming down
Making the presence of God
Palpable in the beauty.
I wish I could fall with the falling
In ecstasy of loving
The drenched ethereal lilt.
It’s raining.
~Jacob McGee

He (God) provides rain for the earth; he sends water on the countryside. ~Job 5:10  ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

1169. It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

by

28

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.
My garden of flowers is also my garden
of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts
grow as freely as the flowers,
and 
the dreams are as beautiful.
~Abram L. Urban

Screen Shot 2016-06-08 at 4.55.29 PM.png
(Upper left is view out of other half of patio doors; upper right is another shot straight into the green house from my chair. Lower left is the swing house to right of the greenhouse and behind it is the giant oak and the storage shed; lower right is the rose arch over the small porch outside of Natalieworld)

After a recent post where I showed part of my garden and some of the flowers that are blooming now, I received many lovely comments. So I decided to post one more glimpse of my yard and what’s currently blooming. The Texas Heat Beast has definitely arrived, and since he’s stoking up summer’s fiery heat, lots of what I have blooming now will soon be gone. A measure of things will revive in the fall, but there is much more that sadly won’t be back again until next year. Only the hardiest make it through summer’s inferno in Texas, and what I always miss most as we endure the torrid, feverish trek through July and August and September is an unrivaled allure of the ethereal and delicate nature of flowers that beautiful spring proffers.

Screen Shot 2016-06-08 at 8.53.36 PM.png
(Upper left is more of the allium that’s beginning to bloom; upper right is a double daylily; lower left is a lily; lower right is that same lily before it popped open.)

A garden is always a series
of losses set against a few
triumphs, like life itself.
~May Sarton

[ She ] My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies. ~Song of Songs 8:13  ✝

**All images taken by me in and of my yard.

196. There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvin

by

8

The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
~Henry Miller

Image

Against the backdrop of “red leaf and the gold” ornamental grasses shift and sigh in autumn’s chilling winds, and as they do, they add to the landscape an ethereal element with their airy flower panicles, fluffy seed plumes, and striking seed heads.  Even after the initial onslaughts of freezing temperatures, grasses continue to grace the landscape with “fringe accents” by adding subtle colors, assorted textures, and the dimensions of motion and sound.  Throughout winter’s “vale of grief,” undaunted by the cold, they capture and play with whatever light is available, and in their animated swayings they speak of life and give us something “that glimmers in the sleep of things.”  And best of all, the lack of heaviness in their lyrical swishing motions along with their visible seed formations remind us that what’s happening is not an end but instead merely the onset of another beginning.

When He(G0d) thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.  He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from His storehouses.  ~Jeremiah 10:13  ✝

193. I know by autumn’s wizardry on such a day the world can be only a great glad dream for me… ~Eleanor Myers Jewett

by

7

The autumn comes, a maiden fair
In slenderness and grace…
In flowers of grasses she is clad;
And as she moves along,
Birds greet her with their cooing glad
Like bracelets’ tinkling song.
~Kalidasa, 5th century Sanskrit poet and dramatist

Image

A “maiden fair” has autumn most certainly been, but now the gusty, cooler winds of advancing November fray her youthful garments more and more.  The season is growing long in the tooth, and the once slender, grace filled maiden has metamorphosed into a more roughly-hewn grown woman.  Deepening autumn’s brisk caresses and shivering moments continue to take their toll on the landscape, and the growing wildness in her tattered countenance is changing her refined glory into a bewitching, reckless abandon.  Until all her days are gone, however, the saving grace of her now tattered remnants will be the native and ornamental grasses that shift and sigh giving her a new song and her aging visage a pretty, ethereal appearance.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.  ~Isaiah 40:8  ✝