Time for a Bit of Spring Magic

It’s another rainy/sleety/snowy day in Minnesota. Instead of looking out my window at the weather today I decided that it was

Time for a Bit of Spring Magic

indoors, photographing flowers.

So I went to the greenhouse to pick up a bouquet of flowers — I ended up splurging on a bouquet of flowers, some cherry blossom branches and a plant. It’s finally ranunculus flower season, a time of year that I wait for each spring! It was such a happy surprise to find little ranunculus plants in bloom at the greenhouse. I love these flowers’ layered, papery, textured petals. And I was delighted to discover a bunch of stems of cherry blossoms that sang “spring!” to me. I also picked up a bouquet of alstroemeria flowers because they last so long and have so many different tones and colors.

The alstroemeria flowers are just beginning to open so I will save photographing them until tomorrow. But the cherry branches and ranunculus plant are in bloom with more buds that I hope will open later.

I am using my inexpensive 50mm lens on my Canon camera today with and without extension tubes and with varying depths of field. It seems I never tire of looking for just the right angle at just the right distance on flower blossoms.

It feels like a familiar joyful dance moving between my dining room buffet table photography space and my computer desk in my office to download and edit photographs of flowers. Even though I’ve photographed ranunculus flowers, and cherry blossoms and alstroemeria flowers many times before I find new things to love each time I photograph them.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hestitate.
Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind.
And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left.
Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,
that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.
It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.
Anyway that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.
Joy. is not made to be a crumb.
   — Mary Oliver

What brings you joy? And when was the last time you purposefully chose joy in your daily life?

May you walk in beauty (and joy).