The Healing Power of Flowers

I got the most wonderful envelope of flower advertising from a plant nursery a few days ago and they just screamed for me to glue them into my art journal. So here they are with a few added words and twirls and ink. Summer fun!!!

***^***^***

"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, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A late cloudy afternoon and one of my backyard Moonflowers on the verge of unfurling. They only live one single night, by morning they are dead.


+++++


"A flower's appeal is in its contradictions - so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect." ~Adabella Radici

A set of silky, wrinkly Moonflower twins in my front yard around my dirty ironwork. They're so fragile, freshly opened with their delicate petals and heavenly scent. The scent is like a drug---I can't keep my nose out of them! They remind me of the sand dollars we used to find on the beach. I saw my first pink and black Sphinx Moths the night of the full moon but they were too elusive to be captured in photos. One even bumped my arm as if to push me out of the way on her way to the intoxicating Moonflower nectar.

+++++++

"I know that if odour were visible, as colour is,

I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds." ~Robert Bridges, "Testament of Beauty"

This flower blooms in a little globe (I forget the name!) but it's not an Allium. The last few afternoon rains got her to finally bloom for me this year!

My sassy, pink Pansies have really outdone themselves. I just can't pass one by without snapping a photo.

Sunflowers are nature's enigma. They bloom early with their bright yellow, smiling faces, then bend their heads as if sorrow is weighing them down. I had to change this one to black and white because it just fit better. Doesn't she look forlorn? But the happy part is that she makes seeds and feeds the birds even as she is drying and dying.....

***~***~***~***

"Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock." ~Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers: A Discourse of Flowers

Oh, the Zinnias, like rabbits they multiply! Just when I think they're done blooming, here comes another one in a color I've never seen before. These orange ones are blooming under the Sunflowers.

My backyard Zinna patch by my Tomatoes. They've been loaded with baby bumble bees ever since spring. Every spring I go to Dollar Tree and buy 10 packs of Zinnias for a dollar. So far, I've only planted 4 packs. I'm staggering them now every few weeks so I'll have their company until frost. I recently made a flower bed around my mailbox and mixed Zinnia seeds with Daisies and Purple Coneflowers. They're about 3 inches high. They'll make my mailman happy, bless his old heart. He told me the other day (when I have a package he honks the horn for me because he knows how I love my books and don't want to drive to the P.O. to pick them up) that I didn't look a day over 35. I told him I think he needs glasses. LOL!

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life." ~Jean Giraudoux

===========

Blessings, Peace & Happiness,

~*~Marion~*~