I love the spring.
For every day
There’s something new
That’s comes our way.
Another bud
Another bird
Another blade…
~Author Unknown
Came spring on warm wings
but the hotter pinks arise
as sweet April advances
~Natalie Scarberry
You make known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand. ~Psalm 51:16 ✝
The peace and beauty
of a spring day
had descended upon
the earth
like a benediction.
~Kate Chopin
Pink, pink, and more pink! Yes I know there are others colors in the garden, but what a lovely color is pink, the quiet hue on the sweet side of red. And then there are the wonderful names of the different shades of pink! What’s not to love about monikers like baby pink, berry pink, salmony pink, watermelon pink, and of course hot pink. Though most of the pinks tone down the color red, hot pink stimulates the high levels of energy associated with passion which the color red often signifies. Even in realms other than the garden pink is a revered color. For example, cities in the world are associated with it, businesses are linked to it, and then there’s the refreshing taste of pink lemonade consumed on hot summer days all over the world. It’s also a color mentioned in a host of song lyrics, and of course pink is the color of romance and young love. As a color long considered feminine, it was once a color associated with the Virgin Mary. Last but not least pink is the color of innocence, and as such it is oh so appropriate for the birthing of a new spring.
You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety. ~Job 11:18 ✝
The rose speaks of love silently,
in a language known only to the heart.
~Author Unknown
Slow buds the pink dawn
like a rose from out
night’s gray and cloudy sheath.
Softly and still it grows and grows.
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.
~Susan Coolidge
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time for them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he lives with nature in the present, above time. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ~Deuteronomy 6:4 ✝
**All 3 of these photos above were taken by me of a rose named, Cherry Brandy, which I believe may be my all time favorite. I sure hope I can find one to plant in my yard.
There be delights that will fetch the day about
from sun to sun and rock the tedious year
as in a delightful dream …for a garden is Arcady
(a region of rural simplicity and contentment)
brought home. It is man’s bit of gaudy
make-believe – his well-disguised fiction
of an unvexed Paradise – a world where
gayety knows no eclipse…
~Edited lines by John D. Sedding
Shhhhhhh! Do you hear it? Okay, okay, try again. Listen carefully! Did you hear something this time? Did you? If not, did you see anything different? Surely with the vernal equinox only 4 days away, you’ve heard and seen the come-hither voice of springtime and the early signs of it that daily grow more visible and audible. In my yard and elsewhere birds are aflutter and atwitter as they bring nesting materials to birdhouses; colorful crocuses, upright and abloom, chant lovely, little ditties; green perennials whisper quiet anthems as they rise from wombs beneath the soil in search of light and warmth; iris spears that were cut back in the fall now stand tall again offering up gladsome refrains; busy, buzzing bees scurry about in search of nectar and pollen; swelling buds on cherry trees whisper pretty, pink ballads; and on and on go the sights and sounds that make the human heart leap as the faithful promise of Spring materializes once more.
For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. ~Psalm 6:11 ✝
I love thee — I love thee,
‘Tis all that I can say
It is my vision in the night,
My dreaming in the day.
~Thomas Hood
Years ago, I volunteered to plant four trial roses in my garden. One of them was a luscious color of pink, and it’s name was Unforgettable. Sadly it only lived a couple of years and was not one that made it into the rose world. But I loved the thing and every time I passed by one of its fabulous blooms, I broke into a song sung decades ago by Nat King Cole. Since you, my readers, are unforgettably lovely too, I’m wishing you a Happy Valentine’s tonight with the lyrics from that song as well as a youtube link so you can hear Cole’s smooth as silk voice singing the song. Also the painted rose in the mixed-media image above is about the same shade of pink as that luscious rose was. Enjoy! Love, Natalie
Unforgettable, that’s what you are.
Unforgettable though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me.
How the thought of you does things to me.
Never before has someone been more
Unforgettable in every way.
And forever more, that’s how you’ll stay.
That’s why, darling, it’s incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too.
~Excerpted lines from the song, Unforgettable, sung
by Nat King Cole and written
by Phil Ramacon, Coral Gordon, P/K/A Chyna
“A new command I(Christ) give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” ~John 13:34-35 ✝
**Images via Pinterest
How sweet the morning air is!
See how that one little cloud floats
like a pink feather
from some gigantic flamingo.
~Arthur Conan Doyle
Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
Is turning and the waves of darkness
Begin to brighten the shore of dawn
The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light,
The heart fills with fresh, bright breath
And thoughts stir to give birth to color.
~John O’Donohue
In Him(Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. ~John 1:4-5 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
Did you hear them? Of maybe see them?! Did you? I didn’t either, but I know autumn fairies played upon the lawn last night; dew from their pixie dust was shining like diamonds upon the grass this morning. They must have worn themselves out in their playfulness, however, and vanished with the dawn because now where once they romped all I see are avian wings crisscrossing the yard.
Fall has come but her red leaf and her gold have not. And so though the year is growing long in the tooth, the sparkle of life’s spark continues to pulse audibly to the beat of Yahweh’s heart. His Eden is still very much alive; spring and summer’s glory have not been vanquished. I know because I can hear it and see it bursting forth in the red of rosy faces, the yellow that sits atop the Maximillian sunflowers, the white that calls out from the Angel’s trumpets, the pink that plays on in phloxy mounds, the blue that paints the sky and the morning glories, the orange that echoes from the echinacea, the purple that mounts the ruella, and the green that continues to flesh out in grass and fern.
Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy are in His dwelling place. ~1 Chronicles 16:27 ✝
Thank you, Lord, for the beauty of this amazing day as well as the power and strength that fills this aging, ailing body with enough oomph to praise you and rejoice in another day!
** Image via Pinterest
A Garden
Hollyhocks, showing off pink ruffled dresses,
Gossip together on tall, furry stalks,
Coyly ignoring the bachelor buttons
Peeping at them from behind the red phlox.
Lilacs combine with the sweet white alyssum
To fill the warm air with their heady perfume,
And noisy bees gather the generous off’rings
Of all the fair flowers that come into bloom.
And up in a treetop enjoying the garden,
And adding his part to the beauty below
,
A mockingbird sings with creative abandon
A love song to everything summer can grow.
~Linnea Bodman
With rake and seeds and sower,
And hoe and line and reel,
When the meadows shrill with “peeping”
And the old world wakes from sleeping,
Who wouldn’t be a grower
That has any heart to feel?
~Frederick Frye Rockwell
“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.” ~Numbers 6:24-26 ✝
Word of God speak, pour down like rain, and let me rest in your holiness!
**Images via Pinterest
“Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either — not just little boxes of eight, but the boxes of 64… And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.” ~Robert Fulghum
During the growing seasons in my yard, yellow sets up camp on sunflower’s faces, orange spills from the daylily’s cup, red rests on many a rosy petal, blue climbs salvia spikes and perches on morning glory vines while purple dangles from the wisteria vine and crawls along the top of the lavender’s wands. Then there’s the medley of light to dark pink that runs along coneflower petals while gold fills the Rudbeckia petals, the magenta that bubbles on the panicles of the Crape Myrtles, the hot pink that mounts the spires of loosestrife and trumpets forth from the upright tubes of Monarda, and the softer and varied shades of light pinks that adorn other roses as well as the coral vine. What I don’t have nor never will have here in my yard are what you see in the photo, the beautiful wine-red fruits of the prickly pear cactus. I am just not a cactus fan, but I think the ripened fruits of Opuntia are stunning, and in the Texas landscape the prickly pear cactus can be found almost anywhere.
Claude Monet once said that color was his “day-long obsession, joy and torment” and that he perhaps owed “having become a painter to flowers.” Similarly it is my love affair with color and flowers that led have me to become a photographer and blogger. And to think it all began with boxes of crayolas. Why? When I was a child, we lived in southern, coastal California where I fell in love with the flowers I encountered at every turn, and since we traveled every summer either by car or train, Mother wanted to make sure my sisters and I had things to keep us from getting bored and antsy. So each of us got, among other engaging things, a brand new box of crayolas and coloring books for our journeys. I looked forward all year long to those new boxes of crayolas and the pleasurable hours of coloring, but I was not then nor am I now able to draw images very well from scratch. So later in life I replaced my box of crayons for a camera and bought a house with a large yard so I could have lots of growing spaces for flowers. And now it is the pretty flowers and their luscious colors that move me daily to make “offerings” of praise and gratitude to the Lord.
Praise Him (God) for his mighty deeds; praise Him according to his excellent greatness. ~Psalm 150:2 ✝
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! May I dwell in Your holy presence and praise Your name for all that you have given and done.
The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying.
Its fragrant, delicate petals burned by the fiery heat
are too soon ready to fall,
with regret or disillusion, after only a day in the sun.
It is so every July and August in my garden.
One can almost hear their pink, fragrant murmur
as they flutter down to die upon the grass:
“Summer, oh summer, will it always be
sultry, feverish summertime.”
~Edited and adapted lines by Rachel Peden
Although burns have marred her pink petals,
The heat hasn’t utterly robbed the rose of her beauty.
She is yet serene in her fragrant pinkness
And her murmur, albeit faint, speaks of God’s glory.
Nevertheless in Your great mercy You did not utterly consume them nor forsake them; for You are God, gracious and merciful. ~Nehemiah 9:31 ✝
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! May I dwell in Your holy presence and praise Your name for all that you have given and done.
Sacred Touches 