Blooming Now

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.

~ Dale Carnegie

Wild roses are the only ones that grow in my yard.  The bushes are in full bloom at this point in the season, attracting bees and some years, providing a secure nesting place for Snowshoe Hares.

A vine of ‘Hagley Hybrid’ clematis clings to the south west corner of the house near the clothesline.  Their blooms are numerous and a pleasant greeting whenever I hang clothes out to dry.

Hollyhocks cover much of the west side of the house.  My grandfather had a similar arrangement of these flowers in the home where I grew up.  I used to help him water them every evening in the summer.  I tend to only water them when the tops of the stems curl down a little.  The singles are already in bloom and will soon be followed by double blooms of deep burgundy and peach.

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals.  Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident, others are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.

~ Henry Ward Beecher

Jessica at The Magical Mundane has also written a post revealing what’s in bloom in her yard this week.  This is the time of year when many flowers are at their most luscious in the Northern Hemisphere.  What flowers are blooming in your yard today?

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Where Mermaids Arrange their Hair

This large, smooth stone near Rainbow Haven Beach is where mermaids sit at dusk and at dawn. And what do they do there at the rising and setting of the sun?  They arrange flowers in their hair… flowers they’ve found on the beach, growing just at the edge of the high tide line.

These pink-lavender Beach Peas  have tendrils that can easily be twirled and fixed into long mermaid hair.  Land dwellers may have the wind to be concerned about, but mermaids also have to worry about the currents messing with their hair.  It’s not easy to find ornaments that stay in place.

Can’t you just see a pretty mermaid placing one of these pink and white Morning Glories  above one of her ears as she sits on the stone at dawn.  These wild blooms are colorful enough to look striking both above and under the water.

Jacques Cousteau believed that Manatees were what sailors really saw when they thought they were seeing mermaids.  It’s sad that scientists often try to make up in research for what they sometimes lack in imagination.

There are thousands of stones on shores around the world, where mermaids fix their hair and look out to sea as they plan or reflect on the day.  Perhaps there’s one such stone near you.

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The Simplicity of Daisies

The daisy’s for simplicity and unaffected air.
~ Robert Burns

Daisies can be found almost anywhere, growing in gravel along the roadside as well as in carefully tended gardens.  Yet, regardless of where they find themselves, they are consistently unassumingly pretty flowers with a simple design:  Circles of yellow surrounded by numerous petals of white.  Throughout the day, daisies follow the sun in the sky, turning their faces slowly from east to west. 
As a child I often picked bouquets of daisies but found it difficult to find any that weren’t a magnet for tiny insects.  They are a favorite with bees and beetles.

I also used daisies to decorate mud pies and made daisy chains to wear around my neck.  Who has not plucked the petals from a daisy repeating, ‘he loves me, he loves me not?’  Daisies and childhood seem to go together.  They are a symbol of innocence and loyal love.

Their Latin name Bellis Perennis means perennial beauty.  A perennial is usually a flower that lives for more than two years.  The name daisy originates with Day’s eye, as they are open from dawn to dusk.

The daisy is a favorite of my friend Rhonda who is 28 today.  Like the daisy, she has retained her sweetness and simple country girl manner throughout the years.  Here’s a spiral of 28 daisies to mark the occasion.  In this day and age, staying sweet despite our years is no easy feat and an accomplishment well worth celebrating.

Child of the Year! that round dost run
Thy course, bold lover of the sun,
And cheerful when the day’s begun
As lark or leveret,
Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain;
Nor be less dear to future men
Than in old time; -thou not in vain
Art Nature’s favourite.
~ William Wordsworth, To the Daisy

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Think Pink

Forget pink cotton candy, bubble gum, Elvis and Mary Kay’s pink cadillacs, pink slips and the Pink Panther.  Forget the color’s association with baby girls and all things feminine…  lipstick, nail polish and party dresses.  Just… think pink.

Pink, often called rose,  is considered one of the calmest colors to look at.  Its delicate blush is attractive, non-threatening and uplifting.  To look at the world through rose colored glasses is to see everything in a positive light.

You may already know that Picasso had a blue period of painting, characterized by sombre arrangements of melancholic, seemingly disconnected individuals.  But did you know that his blue style was superceded by a rose period?  It expressed a changed life of personal happiness for Picasso, marked by closer relationships with others.

In nature, flowers like peonies, clematis and wild roses paint garden and roadside scenes with joyful jots of pink and rose.  The rising and setting sun may also blush the sky and landscape with a rosy glow.  Perhaps a walk at dawn or sunset may be just the remedy for a sad disposition.  If you’re really feeling blue, it might be helpful to gaze into a pink flower for a few minutes and breathe in its color.  It certainly wouldn’t hurt.  Just keep an eye out for the bees!

Frequently the wood are pink —
Frequently are brown.
Frequently the hills undress
Behind my native town.
Oft a head is crested
I was wont to see —
And as oft a cranny
Where it used to be —
And the Earth — they tell me —
On its Axis turned!
Wonderful Rotation!
By but twelve performed!

~ Emily Dickinson

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Field of Dreams

Have you ever entered a clearing in a forest and suddenly discovered something so unexpectedly beautiful that it almost seemed otherworldly?  This happened to me this morning.  One moment I was on a familiar trail, and the next, I was stepping into unknown territory, lured by wildflowers on the edge of a small meadow.

It was very early morning, and in the twilight, the lupins looked like a blue haze over the green meadow grasses.  I wondered how many people had come upon this place at different times and felt a similar sense of awe.

In one corner, a gnarly tree, bare of leaves, looked over the clearing with its arms raised in exclamation.  It had likely seen this lovely display on numerous occasions during its lifetime.  But such loveliness never fails to impress, regardless of how many times one sees it.  Our long, harsh winters work hard to erase the memory of such visions from one year to the next. 

Such sights in late spring refresh the spirit and are well worth the effort of trodding off the beaten track into unknown territory.  In more places than one can imagine, fields of wildflowers are waiting to be discovered.  God has built them.  Will we come?

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Seeing Stars

Not all stars twinkle in the sky.  Some glisten on the shore or wink up at us from the grass beneath our feet.  Their shape is often best appreciated from above.  However, I drew the Queen Anne’s Lace flower, shown at top, from the perspective of an ant that might be looking up towards the sky from a position on the stem.

Star shapes consist of five or more points radiating from a centre.

These star polygons are given different names depending on how many points they have.  For example, a pentagram has five points while an octagram has eight. 

Many of these star shapes hold spiritual significance.  Pentagrams are considered magical and often used in occult practices.  The Star of David and the Seal of Solomon are both hexagrams, star polygons with six points. 

On land, the variety of star shaped flowers is endless.  In the water, echinoderms are marine animals that reveal radial symmetry in some part of their design at the adult stage.  Sea urchins, sand dollars and starfish are echinoderms that often wash up on Nova Scotia’s shores. 

Sometimes, the star structure of the polygon is not as obvious, as is the case with the hexagonal chambers of bees.  Like other shapes in nature, such as the circle, the branch, the spiral and the meander, these tiny hexagons form exquisite patterns and are the building blocks for larger things, in this case, the honeycomb. 

Over the past five Saturdays, I’ve examined five different shapes found frequently in nature as a lead-in to a Summer Scavenger Hunt.  Next Saturday on June 20th, Midsummer’s Eve, I’ll provide final details of the hunt.  Wherever you make your home on the planet, whether you live in the city or in the country, I hope you’ll consider taking part.

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