Yellow daylily with tiny green grasshopper
Ripening blackberries on the vine
Purple Monarda (Bee Balm)
Morning glory seedlings starting to climb
Cream and dark pink daylily with large grasshopper
Red gladiola
A cluster of pink crinum lilies
Dark and light pink hollyhock through the fence
Pink hollyhock through the fence
Stamen and anthers of the crinum lilies
Nonsense, you say,
Why that’s right up my alley.
It adds spice to life
and soothes the strife.
So here I go like Dr. Seuss
but with a touch of poetic residues.
~Natalie Scarberry
Wham bam popped the hollyhock!
Swoosh unfurled a shady lady morning glory!
Blam boom burst the echinacea!
Zoom scampered the gladiola!
Kapow pounced the daylily!
Onomatopoeia imitates a sound
that it describes with nonsensical words
while alliteration repeats the same letter or sound
at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
And so today after photographing flowers with amazing colors
I thought it might be fun to let you see with both your eyes and ears.
The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. ~Psalm 19:7 ✝
**Top photo via Pinterest; rest were taken by Natalie
I determine to live intentionally, God.
My life will be one of preparation and purpose,
bringing a heavenly fragrance into the stuff of earth.
~Jerome Daley
The scent of a flower invites wildlife to its fragrant banquet, and the guests in turn purposefully do what they do so that the banquet table will never vanish or be empty. The Israelites were asked repeatedly in the Old Testament to offer up burnt sacrifices as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Though animals are no longer sacrificed as burnt offerings, there are ways we can offer up a pleasant aroma not only to the Lord but as Daley suggests to bring a heavenly fragrance into the very “stuff of earth.” Even when physical pain or emotional loss, like a knife wielding demon, carves out great chasms of anguish within body and soul, one can choose to emit “a heavenly fragrance” instead of a demon-defeated foul stench. So it is that today I lift up my voice as a pleasant aroma to the Lord though the challenges of an aging and ailing body be great and painful. And this lovely gladiola that came only to be blown to the ground by high winds, I count not as loss but as gain that the lovely lady came at all.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. -Psalm 19:14 ✝
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! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.
A bunch of glads,
certainly highly emblematic of creation,
remote from frills of working blossom with hope of fruit:
slow, durable, placid,
generous, sure of kingly dreams.
~Gottfried Benn
The ancient Romans called the primary sword of their foot soldiers a gladius, and a smaller sword was a gladiolus, which was often used by the gladiators. Pliny the illustrious Roman author dubbed the flower with the long sword-shaped leaves gladiolus and the name stuck.
Mother’s Gladiolas
by Anne Bach
Mother’s hands dig deep holes in soft brown earth,
watering in the tender seedlings —
teaching me of the promise of flowers.
She was quiet about her thoughts and beliefs,
but I think she always believed
in the promise of flowers.
When we moved
to the old house on top of the hill,
next to the gladiola field, she was even more quiet.
She planted no flowers there.
But the man who picked the gladiolas
brought her a big bunch in all different colors every week.
I think she still believed in flowers
a year later when we moved
to a rural farm house in New Jersey.
She planted pansies all around the old tree
before the long days
when she took to her bed.
I must have been born from her love of flowers
for I have planted them wherever I have lived
Looking for dark rich soil and a promise of flowers.
My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. ~Psalm 119:48 ✝
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!
** Some images via Pinterest
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
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.
The garden is a long son, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.
~Jeff Cox
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
As a gardener, I’m among those who believe
that much of the evidence of God’s existence has been planted.
~Robert Brault
A garden really lives only insofar as it is an
expression of faith, the embodiment of hope, and a song of praise.
~Russell Page
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!
Sacred Touches 