When we look deeply into the heart of a flower,
we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth,
and everything else in the cosmos in it.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

 Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.  ~Claude Monet

 The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.  ~Claude Monet

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

Like Monet, I must always, always have flowers, and I’ve discovered that cut flowers do little to satisfy that hunger.  I need to have flowers that, as in nature, are alive and growing, and to that end my greenhouse is a godsend.  From my chair in our family room I have a clear shot at the back shelf through the window in its door, and so that space is reserved during the winter months for potted flowers that aren’t suited to our Texas climate except as cool weather annuals.  Also like Monet, I must have color, lots and lots of color, and so the more bright and colorful the flowers are the better.  And again, like Monet I wanted to become a painter, but that’s where the likeness between us ends.  I may have found a way to have flowers and color but not the talent to translate that beauty onto a canvas.  However, the Lord in His gracious goodness did not let it end there.  During my years as a teacher I was asked at one time to sponsor the high school’s yearbook.  During that 5 year period I learned from the book’s professional publisher how to take photos,  how to edit and crop them, and how to lay them out on a page in an eye-appealing manner.  Then after I retired, with that training still in place, I discovered the amazing technology of digital photography, and voila, who’s to say an artist of sorts wasn’t born.