The queen of flowers

After the rain.

Peonies are old-fashioned favorites of many gardeners because of their spectacular late-spring blossoms.  Each spring new shoots rise up from below the ground and develop into clumps of large leaves.  Its name means “healing,” and this embodies its protective energies.

… The peony does have some interesting folklore.  Its roots were used to carve amulets because of its protective energy.  If stormy weather arose while on a boat, a peony was burned like incense and the rough weather would calm.  To the Chinese, the peony is the queen of flowers and was always associated with the summer season.  They have grown peonies for 2,000 years.

… Some traditions tell us that the peony was created by the goddess of the moon to reflect her light at night.  Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun, alignment with this flower helps your own inner sun reflect out into life more distinctly.  It helps to cleanse the aura of negative energies and it reminds us that the manifestation of any healing and artistic abilities will be beneficial now and that opportunities to use them are at hand.

~ Ted Andrews, Nature-Speak

A Monday meander: Wild and green

Hostas on a rainy day.

I believe that if one fathoms deeply one’s own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds will be revealed.

~ Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution 

You can’t know who you are until you know where you are.

~ Wendell Berry

The flowers are insane this year

A touch of sunlight.

The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.

~ Lenny Bruce

In every age “the good old days” were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.

~ Brooks Atkinson

What would you create?

Around the pond at Breezy Acres (in northeast Ohio, last week).

That’s the trouble with people. their root problem.  Life runs alongside them, unseen.  Right here, right next.  Creating the soil.  Cycling water.  Trading in nutrients.  Making weather.  Building atmosphere  Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count.

… If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.

~ when the trees speak in The Overstory by Richard Powers

A Tuesday stroll

Rainy day bloom

Flowers open every night
across the sky, a breathing peace,
and sudden flame catching.

~ Rumi

As simple as a rose

Individual.

Life is as simple as a rose — there’s nothing complicated about it — and yet it is mysterious.  Although there is nothing complicated about it, we are not able to comprehend it through the intellect.  You can fall in love with a rose, you can smell it, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can even be it, but if you start dissecting it, you will only have something dead in your hands.

~ Osho