Wildflower Wonder

Pasque Flowers in the Perennial Garden, MN Landscape Arboretum

Thursday morning I went looking to see what might be in bloom at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. And I found even more than I had expected! What wonderful

I felt as I explored and played with making photographs while walking the familiar paths of the gardens there.

Listen, whatever you see and love—
that’s where you are.
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems

I also saw one of my favorite wildflowers, bloodroot, beginning to bloom in the perennial gardens as well.

Bloodroot Flowers, notice how the leaf of the plant is still wrapped around the flower stem. I love how the flowers bloom even before the leaves unfurl.

So today I’m simply sharing some of my favorite photos from my rambles there along with snippets of Mary Oliver poems that I love.

Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems

I found a patch of violets in bloom already in the perennial garden.

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

— Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

I don’t know what this flower is but I love how it popped up to bloom without any leaves around it.

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.

— Mary Oliver, In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music

Some of the magnolias are already in bloom!

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.
― Mary Oliver

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Scilla and Bloodroot flowers

I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

This tiny trillium flower is about as big as my thumbnail

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.

…

The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.
― Mary Oliver, What Can I Say

Pussy Willows in Bloom

Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving
― Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early

I think these flowers are sharp lobed hepatica.

Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.
― Mary Oliver, What Do We Know

A bed of scilla underneath a pine tree

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
― Mary Oliver

The leaves of last year. Soon the trees will be green again.

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

— Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for–
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world
― Mary Oliver, from Mindful