A bouquet of dahlias

I bought a bouquet of dahlias this week, grown by a local grower. Oh, what magnificence, beauty and joy these flowers brought me.

A Bouquet of Dahlias

It’s been a full week and instead of writing about it I’m going to share flower photos, quotes, and snippets of poems about flowers—just because…

“The earth laughs in flowers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I must have flowers, always, and always.”
― Claude Monet

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”
― Okakura Kakuzo

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”
― Iris Murdoch

“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
― Georgia O’Keeffe

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell.  This is the first, the wildest, and the wisest thing I know:  that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.” 

  —Mary Oliver

“Look, hasn’t my body already felt like the body of a flower?”
― Mary Oliver

“This is what l love about flowers. Wherever possible, they just grow; in between the weeds, through a crack in a stone, in the middle of mud or moss – they just grow fearlessly, so confident of their short-lived beauty.”
― Asma Naqi

“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.”
― Georgia O’Keeffe

“Learn from flowers-always angle towards the sun”
― Maureen Joyce Connolly, Little Lovely Things

“I tried to draw my soul but all I could think of was flowers.”
― Natalya Lobanova

“There’s a word in Japanese for being sad in the springtime — a whole word for just being sad — about how pretty the flowers are and how soon they’re going to die.”
— Sarah Ruhl

“These are what flowers look like when they stare up in awe at the night sky.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

  — Mary Oliver, excerpt from “Peonies”

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

~ Mary Oliver

May you walk in beauty.