Tag Archives: Springtime

706. Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king… ~Thomas Nashe

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The rose is a flower of love.
The world has acclaimed it for centuries.
Pink roses are for love hopeful and expectant.
White roses are for love, dead or forsaken,
but the red roses, all the red roses,
are for love triumphant.
~Author Unknown

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Beauty is a form of genius –
is higher, indeed, than genius,
as it needs no explanation.
It is of the great facts in the world
like sunlight, or springtime,
or the reflection in dark water
of that silver shell we call the moon.
~Oscar Wilde

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Earth, my dearest, I will.  Oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over – one of them, ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.  Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the first. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke took the words right out of my mouth!  Earth is all we have, and it is more than enough, to bring us back to the Lord who made it.  Every bit of it–every creature, every flower, every tree, simply everything speaks of God’s glory and His love so that we cannot resist looking for Him and listening for His voice.  It was part of His plan, and it works well for to belong to the earth is to belong to Him.  These two photos are the last in my series of yard photos from my recliner.  The first is a close up of the small pink roses on the arch over the little porch outside my studio.  The second is farther away from that arch so you can see the size of a Cécile Brünner climbing rose somewhat.  Below it and in the background, the darker pink roses are on top of the smaller arch leading to the secret garden at the very back of my yard.  The third one can’t be seen from my recliner.  It, the entrance to the backyard, fills the window here by my computer with yet another pink climbing rose.

The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to mankind. ~Psalm 115:16  ✝

689. The air soft as that of Seville in April, and so fragrant that it was delicious to breathe it. ~Christopher Columbus

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There is no glory or blossom
till looked upon by loving eye;
There is no fragrance in April breezes
till breathed with joy as they wander by.
~William C. Bryant

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Hark, I hear a robin calling!
List, the wind is from the south!
And the orchard-bloom is falling
Sweet as kisses on the mouth.



In the dreamy vale of beeches
Fair and faint is woven mist,
And the river’s orient reaches
Are the palest amethyst.

Every limpid brook is singing
Of the lure of April days;
Every piney glen is ringing
With the maddest roundelays.

Come and let us seek together
Springtime lore of daffodils,
Giving to the golden weather
Greeting on the sun-warm hills.
~Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime; it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms. He gives showers of rain to all people, and plants of the field to everyone. ~Zechariah 10:1   ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

683. Whatever we are waiting for – springtime, peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance – it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart. ~Edited line by Sarah Ban Breathnach

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If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields
has power to move you, if the simple things
of nature have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~Eleonora Duse

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Spring is teeming. Even in areas where snow still covers the ground, much is happening in the hidden realms at this time of year; tight buds get looser, nutrients begin to nourish roots in the sunny corners of the earth, and the hibernating creatures among us start to awaken. ~Excerpted and edited lines from Gratefulness.org

Out of His (Jesus Christ’s) fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. ~John 1:16   ✝

**Image of Pink Ranunculus via Pinterest

659. March is a month of considerable frustration – it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away. ~Thalassa Cruso

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Winds of March, we welcome you,
There is work for you to do.
Work and play and blow all day,
Blow the Winter wind away.
~Author Unknown

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March bustles in on windy feet
And sweeps my doorstep and my street.
She washes and cleans with pounding rains,
Scrubbing the earth of winter stains.
She shakes the grime from carpet green
Till naught but fresh new blades are seen.
Then, house in order, all neat as a pin,
She ushers gentle springtime in.
~Susan Reiner

Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. ~Psalm 85:11   ✝

625. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. ~Sir Walter Scott

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So long sad times
Pull along bad times
You are now a thing of the past.
The skies are clear again.
So let’s sing a song of cheer again!
Happy times,
happy nights,
happy days 
are here again!
~Excerpted lyrics from song 
by Benny Meroff

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The birds are chirping happy tunes. High in the trees the squirrels are happily scampering to and fro. Lengthening sunny days are making those who till the soil happy. And happy little seedling are growing bigger in the warmth. But hold on just a minute! Something’s terribly wrong with this picture. After all it’s still January and therefore winter. So why all the happy dances? Could it be that lies are being spread? As a matter of fact they are, and it happens nearly every year here in north central Texas. In mid to late January the sun begins to speak seductively of springtime, and it tells the fairy tale so well and so long that the land is duped into believing the fallacy. What’s more the unusual warming trend often extends into February making it a partner-in-crime in the treacherous deception. And then wham, bam!!! Winter reclaims its hold on the land. But that’s not the end of the story. Spring will arrive at its ordained “hour upon the stage” for no matter what happens, God is still in control and what He has promised will come to pass.

When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future. ~Ecclesiastes 7:14   ✝

**Image via Pinterest

593. It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. ~Adlai Stevenson

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Prowling his own quiet backyard
or asleep by the fire,
he (a cat) is only a whisker
away from the wilds.
~Jean Burden

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Twas three days after Christmas, and all through the yards
Nothing was stirring, not even wind-blown papery discards;
The feeders were hung by the greenhouse with care,
In hopes the red cardinals soon would be there;
And seedlings were nestled snug in leafy beds,
While thoughts of springtime danced in my head;
The squirrels in their nests and I in my chair,
Lay resting ourselves from yesterday’s fare,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash
And raised the bamboo curtain and tied up its sash.
The lowering gray clouds of a cold winter’s day
Had earlier shrouded the land in garments of gray.
Now in the sun what to my wondering eyes did appear
But a feral feline running a path both straight and clear.
With a blue jay held loosely in her clenched jaw awry
The proud huntress lost her grip and away it did fly
Leaving her to wonder
Why her incursion was put asunder.
~A parody of Clement’s
Twas the Night Before Christmas 

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

I was laughing so hard after what I’d seen, I couldn’t resist the urge for some playfulness and thus wrote the parody above.  The cat, however, was not amused at all by what had happened.

**Image via Pinterest

572. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When the oak is felled
the whole forest echoes with its fall,
but a hundred acorns are sown
in silence by an unnoticed breeze.
~Thomas Carlyle

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A tiny acorn falls from a towering tree. An even tinier seed drops from a flowering plant. Deciduous trees and shrubs lose their sheltering leaves. Perennials die down to the shivering ground when the first hard freeze comes, and the flourishing grass withers and turns brown. At a glance there is no telling proof of life as the sun and moon pass over barren fields throughout the short, cold days and the long colder nights of late autumn and wintertime. Yet the world doesn’t pass into nothingness. What the Lord spoke into the void remains alive in dark, inner chambers where it lies in wait, waiting patiently with expectancy for moments in time when a spark will activate the memory of what Yahweh spoke, and once again life emerges from sacred, secret places. Then sunlight and rain, filled with the same kind of holiness, nurtures the new growth and urges it on to another round of completion. For in the faithful and ongoing rites of passage in springtime under the multitudinous orbs of heaven, life goes on directed by the ancient and engulfing rhyme and reason of the Maker of Heaven and Earth who is as omnipresent now as He has ever and always been.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ~2 Corinthians 4:18   ✝

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480. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. ~Henry David Thoreau

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Seasons knocking on the door
Each one with its unique lore

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Springtime fingerpaints the earth
Spreading its immeasurable mirth

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Summer’s heat bursts upon the scene
And each day the sun reigns as queen

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Autumn casts a cloak of burnished hues
With copper tinged foliage as its muse

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Winter’s kingdom wears robes of pristine white
While snowflakes whispered dance is quite the sight

Seasons stand side by side, natural neighbors
Observing each other’s seasonal labors.
~Edited poem by Kristen A.

He (G0d) made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. ~Psalm 104:19   ✝

404. Until we understand what land is, we are at odds with everything we touch. ~Wendell Berry

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And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest – the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways – and re-enter the woods. For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence. Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world’s longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it. ~Wendell Berry

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Before the human mind could warm to itself,
The hands of the farmer had first to work,
Creating clearances in the earth’s thicket:
Cut into the thorn screens of wild briar,
Uproot the clusters of scrub-bush,
Dig out loose rock until a field emerged
Whose clay could be loosened and softened
To take seed and bring forth crops.
The earth was able to trust
The intention of the farmer’s hands,
Opening it, softening it, molding it
Into a domain of shelter and nourishment.
It waits through its secluded winter
For his imagination of springtime
To feed into its darkened heart
New seeds for it to work its mind on
Until the harvest gathers and thickens. . .
In his mind his fields become presences;
The feel of their colors, the brace of their walls
Have greened his thought and tempered his heart.
~Excerpt from BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
by John O’Donohue, poet, philosopher, scholar

Trust the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. ~Psalm 37:3   ✝

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! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

**Image via Pinterest

375. It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May! ~Lerner and Loewe

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The May Queen is waiting.
Move with her in sacred dance
Living earth is breathing.
Loving through the night in the bright moonlight,
As seedlings open with the rain.
~Ruth Barren

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Yes, I will spend the livelong day
With Nature in this Month of May..,
~William Henry Davies

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Among the changing months,
May stands confest
the sweetest,
and in fairest colors dressed.
~James Thomson

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Spring’s last-born darling, clear-eyed, sweet,
Pauses a a moment, with white twinkling feet,
And golden locks in breezy play,
Half teasing and half tender, to repeat
Her song of May.
~Susan Coolidge

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Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime; it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms. He gives showers of rain to all people and plants of the field to everyone. ~Zechariah 10:1  ✝

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Thank you, 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!