Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.

I know of no other genus whose plants flower out-of-doors every day of the year. I know of no other genus with one or more species coming into bloom or growth, peaking or going dormant at every season.-

Nancy Goodwin, Cyclamen

Missc

Take time to smell the roses.

Observe this dew-drenched rose of Tyrian gardensA rose today. But you will ask in vainTomorrow what it is; and yesterdayIt was the dust, the sunshine, and the rains.-

Christina Rosetti



What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.-

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet




They are not long, the days of wine and roses:Out of a misty dreamOur path emerges for a while, then closesWithin a dream.-

Ernest Dowson, 1867 - 1900




There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the budwas more painful than the risk it took to blossom.-

Anais Nin

It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.

Lone and erect, beneath light's primal flood,A flower! and pure as any one of you.-




For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!-

Edward Abbey



What grows in the garden, so lovely and rare? Roses and Dahlias and people grow there.-


There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the budwas more painful than the risk it took to blossom.





Anais Nin

Where flowers bloom so does hope.

A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.-

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, 1990, p. 13



Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture whenwe speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture)so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)?It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of.-

Michael Pollan, Second Nature, 1991



The Earth Laughs in Flowers



I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!I will touch a hundred flowersAnd not pick one.-

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Kill me not...

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves trees enough, and everyone is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way.-

John Ruskin, 1819-1900, Modern Painters VI


Remember the things I have done for you............. Kill me not...............


There is, I conceive, scarcely any tree that may not be advantageouslyused in the various combinations of form and color.-

Gilpin




Why are there trees I never walk under but large andmelodious thoughts descend upon me?-

Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road


The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.-

William Blake, 1799, The Letters


He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, heprovideth a kindness for many generations, andfaces that he hath not seen shall bless him.-

Henry Van Dyke

More Flowers

Daffy Down Dilly
Has come to town
In a yellow petticoat
And a green gown.