Flowers, wild and otherwise

Blue and yellow glow.  (Stowe, Vermont, June 2017)

There are as many ways of loving as there are people, and that wildflower variety is the great beauty of this dimension of existence.

~ Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi

A constellation of blue and yellow flowers.

I hope you don’t mind that this post is out-of-season, a bit like wearing white after Labor Day used to be.  Are there people who still abide by that rule?  I don’t think anyone does that anymore, but I’m not much of a fashionista and don’t keep up with the arbitrary rules of what to wear and what not to wear.  I dress for comfort, and I suppose that shows.

Autumn’s blaze of colors is almost finished here on our little part of the Eastern Shore.  We had a very blustery day on Sunday with leaves flying everywhere.  There are still some hold-outs.  The trees that were sheltered or that don’t drop their leaves until later still have leaves fluttering on their branches, but pretty much the only color left now is brown with a few hints of gold or bronze here and there.  There is beauty in that, too, and in the late autumn and winter landscapes.  We’ll have plenty of time to explore those in the upcoming months.  For now, I want to share some of springtime with you.

A lovely shade of orange.  (Stowe, Vermont)

I was blessed with the good fortune of experiencing not one, not two, not even three, but four springtimes this year. The first was here at home, on the Eastern Shore.  The second was in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  The third was in my old stomping grounds of Northeast Ohio.  And the fourth was in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.  New Hampshire was just a pass-through for us, but we did stop to look at the wildflowers every now and then.  You might (or might not) remember this image from back in July.  It was taken in New Hampshire during one of those brief stops to admire the beauty of a field of hawkweed and other wildflowers.  Hawkweed doesn’t seem like a very pretty name for such a pretty little flower.  I like the alternative name of fox-and-cubs better.

A galaxy of buttercups. (Stowe, Vermont)

I don’t know what the pretty little blue flowers are in the first two images, and hope that one of you might be able to identify them for me.  They were growing in the shade along a path we walked while staying in Stowe, Vermont.  The buttercups were riotously blooming, too.  There were whole fields of them lighting up the landscape in yellow.

Peony in one of the gardens at the Shelburne Museum (Shelburne, Vermont).

It was not the wildflowers but the peonies that informed me I was experiencing more than one springtime.  Everywhere we went in the early to late spring, peonies were just beginning to bloom.  I felt so privileged to be able to witness the start of the season multiple times, to see the peonies in bloom wherever we went.

Somewhere near Burlington, Vermont.

As much as I love peonies (and I do love them, very much), my favorite flowers throughout our trips, especially in the New England states, were the wildflowers.

This is, I think, blue-eyed grass, a flower I’ve seen in Northeast Ohio as well as here on the Eastern Shore.

I was familiar with some of the wildflowers and others were new to me.  All of them were beautiful, but my favorite of the favorites were the lupines.

Rainy day lupines.

It wasn’t until I looked at the pictures that I realized how much the lupine flowers resemble those of another flower I like very much.  Wisteria.  It was too early for wisteria in Vermont and Maine when we were there, and the wisteria here on the Eastern Shore bloomed near the end of April so we were well into summery flowers here when I got to experience spring again up north.

Ferns and lupines in a garden near Stowe, Vermont.

I even love the leaves of the lupines and the way they catch and hold dew and rain.  The water looks like jewels sitting on the leaves.

In a field near Stowe. If you look closely, you’ll see buttercups towards the middle of the picture and more lupines in the back.

If I could live anywhere in the world, I would want to live in a place where lupines grow.  I’ve been unable to get them to grow here.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it’s too warm.  A friend who used to grow them when she lived in Vermont said part of the problem might be that I planted them in a garden that I weed.  She said they do better if you put them with grasses and other plants.  According to my friend, lupines prefer the company of others rather than sitting alone as the centerpiece.  I completely understand that.  I am the same way.

The wider view.

I’m going to take a little break from blogging.  With Thanksgiving coming up soon here in the U.S., there’s lots to do to get ready for it.  I’ll be spending time with family which is a time to be present and attentive and not writing blog posts in my head.  “Good luck with that,” I heard someone say.  lol!  Some of us who blog regularly have a tendency to be almost always writing blog posts in our heads.  In case you’re interested, meditation helps with that.  It might not be a cure-all, but it teaches the mind to come back into the present.

Creative presence is a good thing to have when I’m with family, especially with family members who I don’t agree with on many topics.  In fact, creativity will be sorely needed at times.  Creativity to change the subject, or to approach certain explosive subjects in a different way, or to just keep my mouth shut and listen.  Listening is so important.  More so than ever these days.  I’m hoping that in the listening, I will be guided to the right questions.  Or guided to keep my mouth shut, which might be a form of grace in and of itself.  I am sure there are some who will be thankful for it.

An iris in the garden by the cabin where we stayed in Maine.

Thank you for visiting with me today.  Happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating it, and if I missed your Thanksgiving celebrations, I hope the day was filled with gratitude and love.

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  🙂

A path through the lupines and wildflowers in Bremen, Maine.

A few of the 10,000 reasons to be happy:  446)  The opportunity to spend time with my father, my siblings, and their spouses and children.  447)  Shared memories and stories.  448)  Lupines.  449)  Flowers of all kinds.  450)  Watching a bald eagle circle around overhead while out for my walk this morning.

Standing tall.