842. A butterfly lowers and rises with the wind’s gusty breath, as if coupled within a dance of loving tenderness. ~Author Unknown

     Screen shot 2015-08-15 at 2.56.57 PM

Dance on my beautiful, winged friends
to “la sublime danse de la vie!”


Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds,

With Nature’s secrets in thy tints unrolled

Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words…

~Excerpted italicized lines from a poem by
Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Screen shot 2015-08-15 at 3.15.17 PM

In a small grassy field
With the trees all around
There’s a fairy ring ancient and old
And at times you can hear
Perfect echoes of sound–
‘Tis the music of ages untold

Screen shot 2014-10-09 at 12.45.00 PM

For the crickets keep time
To a waltz or a reel
And the birds fill that lovely expanse
With the notes to a tune
With a light, airy feel–
In the field where the butterflies dance

Screen shot 2015-08-15 at 3.00.09 PM

Where the wildflowers bloom
With a sweet perfume
In a rainbow of colours and shades
Where the maids hurry down
From the hill-top town
And the butterflies dance with the maids

Screen shot 2015-08-15 at 3.21.40 PM

On a winged pirouette
Or a six legged slip
How they dance, and they wheel and they turn!
And their wings flash in time
To a bright Scottish trip
While the lassies turn ’round by the burn

Screen shot 2015-08-15 at 3.10.35 PM

Where they splash in the stream
Or they lie and dream
Where the bullfrogs thrum
While the butterflies wing
And the hummingbirds hum
While the merry maids sing
In the field where the butterflies dance
~Excerpted verses from a poem
by Isaiah Zerbst

Screen shot 2015-08-15 at 3.07.11 PM

…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance… ~Ecclesiastes 3:4  ✝

**All images via Pinterest

836. May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own being. ~John O’Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
And all the madness and stress of life fall in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,
The light in the mind grows dimmer and dimmer
And weariness invades the body and spirit.

Screen shot 2015-08-09 at 2.16.18 PM

It is time then for your soul to take you back
Into the “quiet immensity of your own being”
Where you can take refuge in your senses,
And notice all the small miracles you rushed through,
Miracles meant to clarify and soothe your soul.
It is time to watch the way of rain
When it falls through space, slow and free.
It is time to imitate the habit of twilight at day’s end
And in so doing open up the well of color
That fosters the brightness and beauty of the day.
It is time to be excessively generous with yourself
So that gradually, you can “awaken to the mystery of being here.”
And afterward having learned a new respect for your heart
It is time to seek the joy that dwells far within slow time.
Thus will you find peace in mind and body, temple of the Holy Spirit.
~Both passages are edited and adapted excerpts from John O’Donohue

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ~1 Corinthians 2:6-7 ✝

**Image via Pinterest and texts added by Natalie

821. I am following Nature without being able to grasp her. ~Claude Monet

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

DSC_0092_2

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right,
since its appearance changes at every moment;
but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life –
the light and the air which vary continually.
For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere
which gives subjects their true value.
~Claude Monet

My favorite artist has always been Claude Monet who was the founder of French Impressionist painting. And so while we were in Paris, we took a bus tour to Giverny where in 1890 the artist  bought a house and land. Later he added a greenhouse and a second studio. The artist remained the architect of his massive gardens at Giverny even after he hired seven gardeners to whom he wrote daily instructions, precise designs and layouts for the plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases. Then in 1893, he purchased additional land with a water meadow and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds and a Japanese bridge, subjects of his best known works. Although, I expected his gardens to be gorgeous, that doesn’t even begin to describe what could well have been a model of the original Garden of Eden or what Heaven might look like. So over the next few days, I want to share with you some of the things I saw that day. Enjoy!

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ~Genesis 2:8  ✝

820. Flowers really do intoxicate me. ~Vita Sackville-West

  All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

DSC_0981

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames–
These must all be fairy names!

Screen shot 2015-07-26 at 7.39.56 PM

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Screen shot 2015-07-26 at 7.30.56 PM

Fair are grown-up people’s trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him. ~Auguste Rodin

Ah to be an artist and to be able to have conversations with the flowers, but then I talk to mine all the time, offering up praise for their beauty. Admittedly they tend to be one-sided conversations, but nodding the head demurely is an acceptable way of accepting words of admiration, is it not?! So too, when I hear the Lord speak, I bow my head in the same way the flowers do, and I pray He also sees it as an act of devoted adoration.

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. ~1 Chronicles 29:11  ✝

**I took the photo of the pink Hollyhock when we visited Monet’s gardens at Giverny, France. The other two images I found on Pinterest.

815. Love’s secret is always lifting its head out from under the covers, “Here I am!” ~Rumi

What is the reason,
The meaning behind life?
What causes its movement,
What makes it come alive?

Screen shot 2015-07-21 at 5.09.24 PM

Nature is a sacred text,
Pages with the deepest truths.
And beyond all outward forms
Lies the secret place of wisdom.

Galaxies roam the universe
Waves flow from shore to shore
Trees seek the heavens
The moon rises at night, why?

The answer is simply Love
All of this, my friend, is in the name of Love
~Edited excerpted passages from the book,
FINALLY BACK HOME, by
Irfaan Ihsan Jaffer

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. ~1 Corinthians 13:1-3  ✝

**Image via Pinterest

806. Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity. ~Lao Tzu


Whenever there is stillness
there is the still small voice,
God speaking from the whirlwind,
nature’s old song and dance…
~Annie Dillard

DSC_0104

“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days. In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still. ~Exodus 14:14  ✝

**The image in my photo is of still waters in a local pond.

770. The flowers are nature’s jewels, with whose wealth she decks coming summer’s beauty.
~Edited excerpt by George Croly

“Summer is coming!” the soft breezes whisper;
“Summer is coming!” the glad birdies sing.
Summer is coming – I hear her quick footsteps;
Take your last look at the beautiful Spring.
~Dora Goodale

DSC_0018

And every stone and every star a tongue,
And every gale of wind a curious song.
The Heavens were an oracle,
and spoke
 Divinity: the Earth did undertake
The office of a priest; and I
being dumb all things did come
With voices and instructions…
~Edited excerpt
by Thomas Traherne

See how wide the mouth of this gorgeous asiatic lily opens to declare God’s glory! Have a blessed weekend, my friends.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. ~Psalm 19:1-2  ✝

748. Red is passion-lit, orange is flowerageous, yellow is suntastic, pink is lipsensual, green is lifebursting, blue is skyful, purple is berrydancing, gray is cloudrainy. ~Terri Guillemets

DSC_0067

Beauty is the adjustment of all parts
proportionately so that one cannot add
or subtract or change without
impairing 
the harmony of the whole.
~Leon B. Alberti

DSC_0199

To conquer a piece of earth and make it as beautiful
as one can dream of it being: That is art, too.
A man cannot be separated from the earth.
I come out of the garden every day feeling,
oh, inspired in a way that one needs
in order to convert the daily-ness of the life
into something greater than that little life itself.
~Stanley Kunitz

DSC_0114

Nothing is more the child
of art than a garden.
~Sir Walter Scott

DSC_0161

But who can paint
like Nature?
Can imagination boast,
amid its gay creation,
hues like hers?
~James Thomson

DSC_0238

Nature is painting for us,
day after day,
pictures of infinite beauty.
~James Russell Lowell

DSC_0091

If you ask me what I came
to do in this world,
I, an artist, will answer you:
I am here to live out loud.
~Emile Zola

DSC_0275

My garden is the canvas
upon which nature paints,
and in it I daily toil.
With my camera in hand
at other times,
I let live 
Yahweh’s art
out loud!
~Natalie Scarberry

Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are al the work of your hand. ~Isaiah 64:8   ✝

**I took all these photos of flowers blooming in my yard.

713. Colors are the smiles of nature. ~Leigh Hunt

You’ve already won me over-in spite of me.
So don’t be alarmed if I fall head over feet.
And don’t be surprised if I love you
for all that you are.
I couldn’t help it-it’s all your fault.
~Alanis Morisette

DSC_0133

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! So what do you think? Is Morisette talking about a man who has won her heart? Or is it possible to fall head over feet in love, with a flower for instance? The color of the flower above certainly makes me smile, and it was a huge surprise, and I do love it.

DSC_0136

It all started several years ago when I decided to plant some new iris in the large island bed. Late in the growing season, I went to a nearby nursery, and all they had were a few scraggly rhizomes that had long since lost their name tags. But not caring too much as to what color they were and trusting that they would still thrive despite their pitiful condition, I bought the five that remained, came home and planted them.

DSC_0134

Sure enough before winter set in, up shot some of their green spears making it appear hopeful that they would for sure “make it.” And not only did they make it that next spring as it turned, but two of them were the amazing color you see in the photos.

DSC_0180

I’d never seen an iris this color before, and thinking that its petals with their beards of gold looked somewhat velvety and chocolatey over their also golden centers, it was indeed this flower’s fault that I couldn’t help but fall in love with its beauty nor resist taking shots of its blooms from all angles year after year. Ain’t love grand with whomever or whatever wins us over?! I think so and apparently so does the Lord.

It (love) always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ~1 Corinthians 13:7   ✝

711. And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~William Shakespeare

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron

DSC_0363

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir

DSC_0356

Oh, how I love the sea and at no time more than when I’m there at dusk or dawn.  I took these photos on a visit to Galveston several years ago, and they still speak to me as much of God as does my garden. While the bird and I walked along the “lonely shore” together, you’ll notice that it stopped twice as if waiting and watching and listening.  I believe it’s because in the dim quietude we both clearly heard the sacred songs of the spheres and the music of the deep sea’s roar.  So let us drink a cup of the “good in everything” today as we celebrate the earth, its bounty, and its beauty.  And let us not forget to praise the Lord now and always for all His gifts and goodness!

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.  ~Romans 1:20   ✝