Extraordinary and Beautiful

It’s March and that means that I can find bunches of ranunculus flowers at some of the local markets. They are one of my favorite flowers, full of layers and layers of papery textured leaves and dark textured centers. I find them both

in all stages of their short lives. Today was my fourth day of photographing these beauties. And I will probably continue to work with them for a few more days.

I love photographing ranunculus flowers and never seem to tire of them. Their curving irregular stems and feathery leaves give them a beautiful wabi-sabi feeling. Even as the flowers begin to wilt and fade they teach me about infinity, beauty, and impermanence. The fact that I cannot find them for much of the year helps me to appreciate them even more.

To feel sabi is to feel keenly one’s own sharp and particular existence amid its own impermanence, and to value the singular moment as William Blake did “infinity in the palm of your hand”—to feel it precise and almost-weightless as a sand grain, yet also vast.

― Jane Hirshfield, The Heart of Haiku

As I am sitting here at my desk writing this post, snow is falling outside my office window. The birds have been active at the bird feeders and I am loving seeing them as I work. A pair of cardinals have been visiting this afternoon, a rarity, since they usually prefer to find fallen seeds on the ground underneath the feeders.

Yesterday we got together with our kids and grandkids for lunch and games (card and board games). We always laugh so much and enjoy our “lunch and game days” immensely. I’m thankful that the snow came today instead of yesterday!

I’ve been enjoying reading poems written by Jane Hirshfield recently. Here’s one that I read last night…

Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs—and this resinous, unretractable earth.

— Jane Hirshfield, The Asking

Hope that you are enjoying this late spring snowstorm and finding at least a little beauty in the fresh white (and hopefully very temporary) ground cover.

May you walk in beauty.