Tag Archives: Perfumes

1346. Perfumes are the feelings of flowers. ~Heinrich Heine

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Flowers always make people
better, happier, and more helpful;
they are sunshine, food
and medicine to the mind.
~Luther Burbank

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I mentioned in a post recently that every Sunday when we go to the grocery store to do our shopping, I buy flowers to put on my desk. And this week instead of cut flowers, I found a springtime mini bulb garden that had been planted in a pot. It was filled with tulips, crocus, dutch iris, hyacinth, and the tiniest little golden daffodils. The hyacinth in the photo above was just opening when I bought the potted garden, and for days now as it opened further I’ve enjoyed it’s heavenly perfume.And as the week has progressed, the crocus has opened as have the tulips and the iris. Then this morning, the last thing to push out of its papery sheaths were the daffodils, and that’s when squeals of delight could be heard far and wide. What absolute joy and great fun can come from the simplest of things! I’ve heard it said that simple minds have simple pleasures, and if that implies that I’m a simple-minded simpleton then so be it. For as the temperature outside plummets below the freezing mark again tonight, the fact that springtime is happening right here next to computer is just way, way too much fun, and simple as that may be, it brings me more than enough immeasurable joy to care not what others may think of me.

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Some women feel the need to act
like they’re never scared, needy or hurt;
like they’ve been hardened by the world.
I think that’s dishonest.
It’s ok to feel delicate sometimes.
Real beauty is in the fragility of one’s petals.
A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all.
~Edited quote by Crystal Woods

Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice. ~Proverbs 27:9  ✝

**All photos were taken by me; I took them outside however instead of where they sit by my computer because I don’t like the way a flash alters the colors of flowers.

477. With finger in her solemn lip, night hushed the shadowy earth. ~Margaret Deland

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Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof;
but in the open world it passes lightly,
with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours
are marked by changes in the face of Nature.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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A black and white cat has leisurely strolled across our patio for several nights in a row now, and it, like all the other felines who wander by, doesn’t seem to be the least bit interested in or fearful of us as long as we’re on the other side of our patio doors. Actually some nights it’s like a holiday parade out there, only it’s peopled by cats, possums, and raccoons, all of whom are the suspected culprits of destructive mischief such as the broken rose stem I discovered this morning. Then some nights, in addition to all that activity, there are the gecko lizards who like to run up and down our patio doors chasing bugs. So it is that though the enchanting yard and gardens have disappeared into the darkness, even in our absence life and the living prevail in the hush of night.

I call our glass patio doors, our big screen TV because the indoor cats and I have wiled away many an hour just watching what goes on outside. In so doing I’ve witnessed a wide spectrum of good and bad, feast and famine, and life and death over the years. And I’ve always found a comforting harmony and balance in those opposing forces. For example it’s easy to lose a sense of how beautiful a garden or the earth in general is without a picture of the kind of devastation that a storm or a drought or some such can do to it. That’s why I think the beauty of spring is so breathtaking; it comes after the landscape has been ravaged by winter’s often harsh and cruel assaults. In the same way, who among us could ever begin to bear the brutality in the world without having also witnessed life’s abundant goodness.

I love the house where you live, O LORD, the place where your glory dwells.  ~Psalm 26:8   ✝

 **Image via Pinterest

412. The day has eyes; the night has ears. ~David Fergusson

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…in the open world it (night) passes lightly,
with its stars and dews and perfumes,
and the hours marked by changes
in the face of Nature.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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This evening sweetly scented perfumes and loud night noises filled the space between heaven and earth. Screeching cricket and cicada choruses rose and fell in unison with the droning engines on the nearby Interstate Highway, and splashes of water in the fountains occasionally added their trickling notes to the developing opus. The day’s winds had slowed but there were still little zephyrs carrying flowery fragrances abroad. Thankfully the day’s high temperatures had lowered as the final remnants of light oozed out of the day taming summer’s heat beast until the morrow’s mid morn when he will again stoke his fires. Early fourth of July revelers were lighting fireworks on the street behind ours, and the soft booms and the quick flashes of light were apparently the cue for barking dogs to join this oddly manned orchestra that was playing “music” through June’s rapidly closing door. Soon God’s lanterns, the stars and waxing moon, were flickering through the trees silhouetted against a deepening indigo sky and creatures, great and small, were beginning to roam, fly, or crawl. Porch lights cast shadowy phantoms over the darkened lawn as the raucous concert played on. Before long the towering trees and the sky merged into a blackened oneness and the din fell into a more subdued humming rhythm. When I rose to come in for the night, I spotted a pearly, luminescent moonflower which I knew would reign as nocturnal queen until tomorrow’s light closed her up and opened the first morning glory to reign on her recently abdicated throne.

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  ✝

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.

403. There is something deep within us that sobs at endings. ~Joe Wheeler

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Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad…all things were glad and flourishing. ~Charles Dickens

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Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here,
that I found there was nothing left for it 
but
to take off my flesh 
and sit in my bones.
~Sydney Smith

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At 6:51 this morning sweet, sweet spring relinquished her throne in the northern hemisphere to sum, sum, summertime! The longest day of the year has arrived; all that began in spring has come into its initiated fullness. Now with corn stalks on the rise so is the heat as we begin the long, hot journey through the “burning cathedral of summer.”

The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter. ~Psalm 74:16-17 ✝

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.

**Images via the Internet

360. …Monet portrayed the changeability and flux of every moment. “The Water Lilies” give you a jittery, amorphous sense of a world seen at the speed of light. ~Jerry Saltz

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I gathered them–the lilies pure and pale,
The golden-hearted lilies, virgin fair,
And in a vase of crystal, placed them where
Their perfumes might unceasingly exhale.
High in my lonely tent above the swale,
Above the shimmering mere and blossoms there,
I solaced with their sweetness my despair,
And fed with dews their beauteous petals frail.
~Florence Earle Coates

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Wow! Don’t ya just love to be wowed?! According to the dictionary “wow” as an expression of excitement was first recorded in Scots in the early 16th century. But the dictionary doesn’t tell us what it was that generated enough excitement to inspire the “wow” in Scots, and I for one would really like to know. I love to be wowed; Creation and the Lord wow me over and over again in ways like no other. Okay, okay, I know; so what is the connection between water lilies and a word that expresses astonishment or admiration. Well…yesterday, we drove through our local Botanical Gardens and I noticed they had put some water lilies in one of their ponds and was thrilled to find something new to “feed” my camera and thus my soul, but wait, that is not what created the “wow” factor although water lilies are “wowish” enough in their own right. It was something I read about them when I got home that prompted the really animated “wows.” According to an encyclopedia, “the Fragrant Water Lily has a unique pollination strategy. On the first day that the flower blooms, its pollen is not yet released. Instead, a fluid fills the centre of the flower covering the female parts. Should an insect visit the flower, the design of the petals causes it to fall into the fluid. If the insect is covered in pollen, the pollen dissolves in the fluid and fertilizes the flower. The next day, no fluid is produced, and pollen is released instead. The insect that falls into the fluid usually emerges unharmed; although a few unlucky ones may be trapped and drown.” Is that amazing or what?! This is exactly why I garden and love gardens and God as much as I do. He is in the goodness and “wow” business, and He does both like nothing else! The world may be in flux at every moment, but the Lord is true and faithful to all His promises and His inherent goodness.

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies. ~Song of Songs 6:3 ✝

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!

266. When hope is hungry, everything feeds it. ~Mignon McLaughlin

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Though you lose all hope,
there is still hope,
and it loves to surprise.
~Robert Brault

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Goodbye January and hello February!  Whew, January is a long month, isn’t it?!  So much so that it makes my hope very hungry indeed.  Dada, dada da da da!  I said hello, February…well hello February…It’s so nice you’ve finally come around again.  You’re lookin’ swell, February…And time will tell February…That spring’s a comin’ February…  Okay, to appreciate my attempt here at “cleverosity” with the previous lines, you have to try to remember a song from a musical by the same name called HELLO DOLLY.  Okay, so maybe it was a lame attempt, but today is just that kind of day, one that puts a song in my heart.  Why?  Why you ask?  Well…

About the time the barrenness of winter starts putting asunder all hope of anything different, February saves the day by bringing forth visible signs of the new spring.  And so it did this year on its very first day.  After I’d watered and waited and watched the bulbs I’d started weeks ago in the greenhouse, I was rewarded today with several emerging buds.  The result: squeals of joy peeled forth inside its walls along with hallelujahs and praise for such glorious surprises amid winter’s gloomy, brown and beige drabness.  But they’re just flowers some might say, but pshaw!  They are pieces in the puzzle of Creation itself, blessed and holy and full of purpose.  They’ve been touched by the very hand of God and then ordained as part of the faithful and reoccurring provision not only for man’s needs but for his pleasure as well.  And if flowers are inconsequential why are so many poems and pieces of literature devoted to them, and why are they considered by many as desirable gifts, and why are their scents revered for use in perfumes, and why have they been worth at times more than gold?

“Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist, and make use of the creation to the full as in youth.  Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes, and let no flower of spring pass us by.  Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither…”  ~Wisdom 2:6-8  ✝