Luscious

I picked up a bouquet of flowers at the Farmers Market yesterday. There were so many in the bouquet that I couldn’t fit all of them into a single vase. What fun I’ve had arranging them and photographing them. It’s a

Luscious

bunch of flowers!

Other words that come to mind to describe them are sumptuous, resplendent, jazzy, vivid, dazzling, cheerful, luxurious, enchanting, and gaudy.

I am soaking them in and celebrating their beauty as the season slowly turns to fall. It is on days like these that I would like to stop time, and savor the beauty of the world.

The turn of seasons

Each year as the season turns to fall and then inevitably to winter I feel as if a little death has occurred. And I grieve even though I realize that this is the way of life. I feel these little deaths each year more keenly the older I get. Sometimes the winter days seem to overshadow all the rest of the days of the year. Winter stretches out too long and summer flies by too swiftly for me. Each year I long for springtime to return more and more.

Still I try to treasure each moment and be grateful for the seasons since they bring so much beauty to life.

Here is a poem Mary Oliver wrote about death that always inspires me to fully live each moment of my life.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purseto buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

   — Mary Oliver

May you walk in beauty.