First Bloom Flower Quotes

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to.

And then we're kissing. His lips are soft and leave mine tingling. I close my eyes, and in the darkness behind them I see beautiful blooming things, flowers spinning like snowflakes, and hummingbirds beating the same rhythm as my heart. I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free. His other hand pushes my hair from my face, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I"m breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed.

Men were created before women. ... But that doesn't prove their superiority – rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi.

I liked it when my mother tried to teach me things, when she paid attention. So often when I was with her, she was unreachable. Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

Immortal amarant, a flower which once In paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life, And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven Rolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream: With these that never fade the spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks.

And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning.

I feel like a flower being taken out of the shadows and put into the sun. I’m blooming for the first time since I broke through the earth’s soil.

Secrets are like plants. They can stay buried deep in the earth for a long time, but eventually they'll send up shoots and give themselves away. They have to. It's their nature. Just a tiny green stem at first. Which slowly, insidiously grows taller, stronger, unfolding itself, until there it is. A big fat secret, right in front of your face; a fully bloomed flower perfumed with the scent of deception.

Look at the four-spaced year That imitates four seasons of our lives; First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers, Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child, Its way unsteady while the countryman Delights in promise of another year. Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses, And then Spring turns to Summer's hardiness, The boy to manhood. There's no time of year Of greater richness, warmth, and love of living, New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn, First flushes gone, the temperate season here Midway between quick youth and growing age, And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us, Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair, Terror in palsy as he walks alone.

A flower must bloom inside first before revealing its beauty to the world.

Dutifully, the Count put the spoon in his mouth. In an instant, there was the familiar sweetness of fresh honey—sunlit, golden, and gay. Given the time of year, the Count was expecting this first impression to be followed by a hint of lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. But as the elixir dissolved on his tongue, the Count became aware of something else entirely. Rather than the flowering trees of Central Moscow, the honey had a hint of a grassy riverbank . . . the trace of a summer breeze . . . a suggestion of a pergola . . . But most of all there was the unmistakable essence of a thousand apple trees in bloom. "Nizhny Novgorod", he said. And it was.

The human heart is like a flowerbed, Laura. Once the first blooms die, there’s room enough for something else to grow, but it will never be quite the same as that first flower, the initial thrill of seeing what your heart is capable of.

For our species, the idea of art as ornament is a relatively new one. Our ape brains got too big, too big for our heads, too big for our mothers to birth them. So we started keeping all our extra knowing in language, in art, in stories and books and songs. Art was a way of storing our brains in each other’s. It wasn’t until fairly recently in human history, when rich landowners wanted something pretty to look at in winter, that the idea of art-as-mere-ornament came around. A painting of a blooming rose to hang on the mantel when the flowers outside the window had gone to ice. And still in the twenty-first century, it’s hard for folks to move past that. This idea that beauty is the horizon toward which all great art must march. I’ve never been interested in that. “As heaven spins, I fall into bedlam.

The news did not trouble her particularly; all news was bad, like wage demands, strikes, or war, and the wise person paid no attention to it. What was important was that it was a bright, sunny day; her first narcissi were in bloom, and the daffodils behind them were already showing flower buds.

She was so pretty, not the kind of pretty that hits you at first, but the kind that blooms the longer you were with her. Like a flower, she was always like a flower to me.

She wasn’t pretty. That was too simple of a word. She was a ray of sunshine in the middle of a dark night. A cool breeze amid a storm. The first flower that bloomed after a long winter. She was an infusion of light into the abyss that was my soul.

A Chinese proverb predicts that for every man with great skill, there is a woman with great beauty. In ancient China, there are four great beauties: The first so beautiful that when fish see her reflection they forget to swim and sink. The second so beautiful that birds forget how to fly and fall. The third so beautiful that the moon refuses to shine. The fourth so beautiful that flowers refuse to bloom. I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse.

In the first week of April the weather turned suddenly, unseasonably, insistently lovely. The sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and the sun beamed on the muddy ground with all the sweet impatience of June. Toward the fringe of the wood, the young trees were yellow with the first tinge of new leaves; woodpeckers laughed and drummed in the copses and, lying in bed with my window open, I could hear the rush and gurgle of the melted snow running in the gutters all night long. In the second week of April everyone waited anxiously to see if the weather would hold. It did, with serene assurance. Hyacinth and daffodil bloomed in the flower beds, violet and periwinkle in the meadows; damp, bedraggled white butterflies fluttered drunkenly in the hedgerows. I put away my winter coat and overshoes and walked around, nearly light-headed with joy, in my shirtsleeves.

Love blooms like a flower, but only the expression of love fills it with fragrance

I'm what the botanists call a hybrid," he said the first time Cora heard him speak, "A mixture of two different families. In flowers, such a concoction pleases the eye. When that amalgamation takes its shape in flesh and blood, some take great offence. In this room we recognize it for what it is - a new beauty come into the world, and it is in bloom all around us.

Observing any human being from infancy, seeing someone come into existence, like a new flower in bud, each petal first tightly furled around another, and then the natural loosening and unfurling, the opening into a bloom, the life of that bloom, must be something wonderful to behold; to see experience collect in the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, the weighing down of the brow, the heaviness in heart and soul, the thick gathering around the waist, the breasts, the slowing down of footsteps not from old age but only with the caution of life-all this is something so wonderful to observe, so wonderful to behold; the pleasure for the observer, the beholder, is an invisible current between the two, observed and observer, beheld and beholder, and I believe that no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

She watched the glass, a plain woman, changing all to the delightful illusion of beauty. There was still time: for her ugliness was destined to bloom late, hidden first by the unformed gawkiness of youth, budding to plainness in young womanhood and now flowering to slow maturity in her early forties, it still awaited the subtle garishness which only decay could bring to fruition: a garishness which, when arrived at, would preclude all efforts at the mirror game.

There is a Sufi story about a man who is so good that the angels ask God to give him the gift of miracles. God wisely tells them to ask him if that is what he would wish. So the angels visit this good man and offer him first the gift of healing by hands, then the gift of conversion of souls, and lastly the gift of virtue. He refuses them all. They insist that he choose a gift or they will choose one for him. "Very well," he replies. "I ask that I may do a great deal of good without ever knowing it." The story ends this way: The angels were perplexed. They took counsel and resolved upon the following plan: Every time the saint's shadow fell behind him it would have the power to cure disease, soothe pain, and comfort sorrow. As he walked, behind him the shadow made arid paths green, caused withered plants to bloom, gave clear water to dried up brooks, fresh color to pale children, and joy to unhappy men and women. The saint simply went about his daily life diffusing virtue as the stars diffuse light and the flowers scent, without ever being aware of it. The people respecting his humility followed him silently, never speaking to him about his miracles. Soon they even forgot his name and called him "the Holy Shadow.

Flowers bloomed without glimpsing your smile in spring, leaves have fallen in autumn chiming in with the gloom, the chill of winter has gone and now is the first light of summer without you near but in our hearts will forever hold you dear..." Elizabeth's Shorter Poems

NINA Your life is beautiful. TRIGORIN I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!

all that blooms must wither first

How are you giving it magic?” he said, through his teeth. “I already found the path!” I said. “I’m just staying on it. Can’t you—feel it?” I asked abruptly, and held my hand cupping the flower out towards him; he frowned and put his hands around it, and then he said, “Vadiya rusha ilikad tuhi,” and a second illusion laid itself over mine, two roses in the same space—his, predictably, had three rings of perfect petals, and a delicate fragrance. “Try and match it,” he said absently, his fingers moving slightly, and by lurching steps we brought our illusions closer together until it was nearly impossible to tell them one from another, and then he said, “Ah,” suddenly, just as I began to glimpse his spell: almost exactly like that strange clockwork on the middle of his table, all shining moving parts. On an impulse I tried to align our workings: I envisioned his like the water-wheel of a mill, and mine the rushing stream driving it around. “What are you—” he began, and then abruptly we had only a single rose, and it began to grow. And not only the rose: vines were climbing up the bookshelves in every direction, twining themselves around ancient tomes and reaching out the window; the tall slender columns that made the arch of the doorway were lost among rising birches, spreading out long finger-branches; moss and violets were springing up across the floor, delicate ferns unfurling. Flowers were blooming everywhere: flowers I had never seen, strange blooms dangling and others with sharp points, brilliantly colored, and the room was thick with their fragrance, with the smell of crushed leaves and pungent herbs. I looked around myself alight with wonder, my magic still flowing easily. “Is this what you meant?” I asked him: it really wasn’t any more difficult than making the single flower had been. But he was staring at the riot of flowers all around us, as astonished as I was. He looked at me, baffled and for the first time uncertain, as though he had stumbled into something, unprepared. His long narrow hands were cradled around mine, both of us holding the rose together. Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song. I was abruptly too hot, and strangely conscious of myself. I pulled my hands free.

At first, as the months went by, it was shameful to me when I would realize that without my consent, almost without my knowledge, something had made me happy. And then I learned to think, when those times would come, 'Well, go ahead. If you're happy, then be happy.' No big happiness came to me yet, but little happinessess did come, and they came from ordinary pleasures in ordinary things; the baby, sunlight, breezes, animals and birds, daily work, rest when I was tired, food, strands of fog in the hollows early in the morning, butterflies, flowers. The flowers didn't have to be dahlias and roses either, but just the weeds blooming in the fields, the daisies and the yarrow. I began to trust the world again, not to give me what I wanted, for I saw that it could not be trusted to do that, but to give unforeseen goods and pleasures that I had not thought to want.

For it was the one that I would have chosen above all others, convinced as I was, with a botanist’s satisfaction, that it was not possible to find gathered together rarer specimens than these young flowers that at this moment before my eyes were breaking the line of the sea with their slender heads, like a bower of Pennsylvania roses adorned a Cliffside garden, between whose blooms is contained the whole tract of ocean crossed by some steamer, so slow in gliding along the blue, horizontal line that stretches from one stem to the next that an idle butterfly, dawdling in the cup of a flower which the ship’s hull has long since passed, can wait, before flying off in time to arrive before it, until nothing by the tiniest chink of blue still separates the prow from the first petal of the flower towards which it is steering.

First write down that I said write down and think of the millions of people all over the world who cannot hear a choir, or a symphony, or their own babies crying. Write down, I can hear—Thank God. Then write down that you can see this yellow pad, and think of the millions of people around the world who cannot see a waterfall, or flowers blooming, or their lover’s face. Write I can see—Thank God. Then write down that you can read. Think of the millions of people around the world who cannot read the news of the day, or a letter from home, a stop sign on a busy street, or…

Ulysses [excerpt Molly Bloom’s closing soliloquy ...and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Of course to one so modern as I am, `Enfant de mon siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible existe.

The moors were far more complex than they had seemed to her on that first night, when she had been young and innocent and unaware of her own future. They were brown, yes, riddled with dead and dying vegetation. Every shade of brown that there was could be found on the Moors. They were also bright with growing green and mellow gold, and with the rainbow pops of flowers - yellow marigold and blue heather and purple wolf’s bane. Hemlock bloomed white as clouds. Foxglove spanned the spectrum of sunset. The Moors were beautiful in their own way, and if their beauty was the quiet sort that required time and introspection to be seen, well, there was nothing wrong with that. The best beauty was the sort that took some seeking.

Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual– to me– a perfectly new character, I suspected was yours; I desired to search it deeper, and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent; you were quaintly dress– much as you are now. I made you talk; ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet, when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face; there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me – I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquilized your manner; snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure, at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw; I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely, I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance; besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade – the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you – but you did not; you kept in the school-room as still as your own desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, fro you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me– or if you ever thought of me; to find this out, I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed; I saw you had a social heart; it was the silent school-room– it was the tedium of your life that made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon; your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time; there was a curious hesitation in your manner; you glanced at me with a slight trouble– a hovering doubt; you did not know what my caprice might be– whether I was going to play the master, and be stern– or the friend, and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to stimulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom, and light, and bliss, rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.

When the first blooms came they were like the single big flower Oriental prostitutes wear on the sides of their heads…But when the hemispheres of blossom appear in crowds they remind him of nothing so much as hats worn by cheap girls to church on Easter.

Maude gives a small smile. “The human heart is like a flowerbed, Laura. Once the first blooms die, there’s room enough for something else to grow, but it will never be quite the same as that first flower, the initial thrill of seeing what your heart is capable of.

Things I love about spring are these: Blooming flowers on fruit-bearing trees. Fire-red tulips—their first reveal— Followed by sun-yellow daffodils. Trees acquiring new coats of green. Natural waterfalls glistening. The chirps and melodies of birds. Throaty ribbits of frogs overheard. A passing whiff of mint to smell, Oregano and basil as well. Colorful butterflies with wings. Fuzzy, industrious bees that sting. Sunlight waning late in the day. Warm breezes causing willows to sway. Most of all, a sense of things new, Including budding feelings for you.

Before that first line of pale chalk, before the underdrawing fleshes out into shapes and proportions, there is a stab of grief for all the things she didn't get to paint. The finches wheeling in the rafters of the barn, Cornelis reading in the arbor, Tomas bent over in his roses in the flower garden, apple blossoms, walnuts beside oysters, Kathrijn in the full bloom of her short life, Barent sleeping in a field of lilacs, the Gypsies in the market, late-night revelers in the taverns…. Every work is a depiction and a lie. We rearrange the living, exaggerate the light, intimate dusk when it's really noonday sun.

First Love I ne’er was struck before that hour With love so sudden and so sweet, Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower And stole my heart away complete. My face turned pale as deadly pale, My legs refused to walk away, And when she looked, what could I ail? My life and all seemed turned to clay. And then my blood rushed to my face And took my eyesight quite away, The trees and bushes round the place Seemed midnight at noonday. I could not see a single thing, Words from my eyes did start— They spoke as chords do from the string, And blood burnt round my heart. Are flowers the winter’s choice? Is love’s bed always snow? She seemed to hear my silent voice, Not love's appeals to know. I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before. My heart has left its dwelling-place And can return no more.

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill, And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed Like a waste garden, flowering at its will With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed Black and unruffled; there were white lilies A few, and crocuses, and violets Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun. And there were curious flowers, before unknown, Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one That had drunk in the transitory tone Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades Of grass that in an hundred springs had been Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, And watered with the scented dew long cupped In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt, A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across The garden came a youth; one hand he raised To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes Were clear as crystal, naked all was he, White as the snow on pathless mountains frore, Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes A marble floor, his brow chalcedony. And he came near me, with his lips uncurled And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth, And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend, Come I will show thee shadows of the world And images of life. See from the South Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.' And lo! within the garden of my dream I saw two walking on a shining plain Of golden light. The one did joyous seem And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids And joyous love of comely girl and boy, His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy; And in his hand he held an ivory lute With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, And round his neck three chains of roses were. But he that was his comrade walked aside; He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight, And yet again unclenched, and his head Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death. A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold With the device of a great snake, whose breath Was fiery flame: which when I did behold I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth, Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.' Then straight the first did turn himself to me And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame, But I am Love, and I was wont to be Alone in this fair garden, till he came Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.' Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will, I am the love that dare not speak its name.

When I first discovered the world of paper flower crafts, I was immediately excited and quickly consumed with all the possibilities.

Whenever you enjoy the bounties of nature like the sunrise or a blooming flower you are connecting yourself with the pure potentiality.

Bamboo blooms rarely, maybe every sixty to one hundred years, but when the parent plant flowers, its offspring—no matter where in the world they are—also bloom.

I’m what the botanists call a hybrid,” he said the first time Cora heard him speak. “A mixture of two different families. In flowers, such a concoction pleases the eye. When that amalgamation takes its shape in flesh and blood, some take great offense. In this room we recognize it for what it is—a new beauty come into the world, and it is in bloom all around us.

Oro pressed two fingers against her heart. Ran them lower, to the center of her chest. A vine snaked its way across the balcony and bloomed a red rose. Oro plucked it. Offered it to her. She stared down at the flower. A rose with thorns, just like her. It was beautiful. Vicious. Isla took it, then threw it over her shoulder, clean off the balcony. And stood on her toes so her forehead touched his. Oro stilled. His eyes were amber and burning, nothing like the emptiness she had glimpsed the first day of the Centennial. He looked at her like she was the thing they had torn apart the island for, the heart he had been desperately trying to find all these years, the needle that had finally threaded him together. Isla took a shaky breath.

First, the plum trees bloomed, and then the cold wind veered towards the south. After a while, I heard that the cherry trees were beginning to flower. But I thought of nothing but my thesis.

Love, its like a flower, first its in bloom thats when love is at its begining. When its full love is strong. But when it dies, the love fades away, petal by petal following apart until it dies.

There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia. I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ... Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower... I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms. When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism. But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.

The first day of spring, the vernal equinox—the season of renewal when the earth sheds its winter cloak, flowers bloom, and the heart feels as though everything is once again imaginable. The smell of fresh-cut grass, shagging fly balls, and scraping mud from baseball cleats. A brief contemplation and tear for those gone from the field, their easy laugh and nimble sprint no longer gracing the game.

Beyond that was a small orchard, its trees appearing to hold the first signs of apples. Cherry blossoms bloomed in the May warmth, forming neat columns of shady pathways. The manicured grass, so unlike the wild fields of the farm, was intersected by meandering pebbled walkways, where her ladies must tread when receiving finely dressed visitors. Birdsong pierced the blue sky, as did the aroma of fresh-petaled flowers.

The trees above them are blossoming with white flowers. The sky glimpsed through the branches so blue. How can he not notice as they pass beneath them? When God first began to brainstorm the world did He think to make branches a dark brown and flowers either white or soft pink, and only like that in the spring, so that you are always startled by their bloom? Or were God’s decisions scattered and sudden, beautiful by chance?

So often when I was with her, she was unreachable. Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

That was the first time I ever saw Suzanne—her black hair marking her, even at a distance, as different, her smile at me direct and assessing. I couldn’t explain it to myself, the wrench I got from looking at her. She seemed as strange and raw as those flowers that bloom in lurid explosion once every five years, the gaudy, prickling tease that was almost the same thing as beauty. And what had the girl seen when she looked at me?

Lamium Migraine dreams, jagged seams, A badge of love and pain. Or dreamy eyes, sleepy eyes, Drooping, closing, losing light. Packages scattered under the tree, Some torn open, some tied tight. Is there a heartbeat in those purple veins? Are those embryos or mouths or rosary beads? The color of my first dress, gathered with love, Fairy cups stirred with blades of grass, notes clustered on a windy score, Three blooms, three friends, alas! Grape flowers, cloud flowers, love flowers, Paper parasols upside down, a butterfly herd Stopped to rest by a deep green pool. Petals small as a child's tears good-bye, Dropped stitches everywhere From a blanket the color of sky.

Falling out of love is a lot harder than falling in love. When you fall in love, everything is beautiful—flowers bloom, music plays, and every star in the sky is winking at you. But falling out of love is like finding yourself in a pitch-black tunnel. At first you think in time you’ll get through it, and then you realize how terribly long the tunnel is. I’m starting to see pinpricks of light ahead, so I might be coming to the end, but I’m not there yet.

What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this ? Do they somehow suppose It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember Who called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose, They could alter things back to when they danced all night, Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September ? Or do they fancy there's really been no change, And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight, Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming Watching light move ? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange: Why aren't they screaming ? At death, you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end, And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower Of being here. Next time you can't pretend There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs: Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it: Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines- How can they ignore it ? Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning, The blown bush at the window, or the sun' s Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: Not here and now, but where all happened once. This is why they give An air of baffled absence, trying to be there Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear Of taken breath, and them crouching below Extinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceiving How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet. The peak that stays in view wherever we go For them is rising ground. Can they never tell What is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night? Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughout The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well, We shall find out.

Mala faced her wall of faded cereus blooms. She was content. Oblivious to the dew that drizzled from the mudra, she rocked and dozed lightly. Scent, as though too shy for light, no longer trickled from the blossoms but Mala was not yet ready to leave the yard. Her eyes would flicker open and catch a glimpse of the day that was beginning to split the black sky apart. In that first orange light the flowers hung limp, battered and bruised, each one worn out from the frenzied carnival of moths. (140)

Ode to Love Lin Huiyin I think you are the April of this world, Sure, you are the April of this world. Your laughter has lit up all the wind, So gently mingling with the spring. You are the clouds in early spring, The dusk wind blows up and down. And the stars blink now and then, Fine rain drops down amid the flowers. So gentle and graceful, You are crowned with garlands. So sublime and innocent, You are a full moon over each evening. The snow melts, with that light yellow, You look like the first budding green. You are the soft joy of white lotus Rising up in your fancy dreamland. You’re the blooming flowers over the trees, You’re a swallow twittering between the beams; Full of love, full of warm hope, You are the spring of this world!

The sun shines every day without being told that it is brilliant. The mountains stand tall and majestic though no one informs them of their grandeur. The winds twirl and dance with clouds, minus cheers or compliments to inspire their moves. Flowers bloom, showing off colors, long before passing smiles acknowledge any beauty. The ocean claps at its own underwater chorus without topside ears listening. What is the world trying to tell you? Be wonderful because you are. Quit waiting to be told so first.

Clingy friends are worth dying for. The ones who want to include you in every party they’re invited to. The ones who want you to be happy but also get a little jealous every time you talk about your new friends. The ones who take offence when someone says something even slightly bad about you. The ones you can call without dropping a text first and asking if it’s okay to call at the moment. The ones who know your favourite movie isn’t the one you ask everyone to watch— it’s the one you never mention to anyone because you don’t want to share it with others. The ones who know you feel too much. The ones who reassure you that just because you feel a lot doesn’t mean you are a lot. The ones who love you the way the rain loves flowers and poets love stars. The ones who are there for you on days when your heart is breaking, and also on the days when it’s blooming better than all your favourite flowers. There are some friends who make you feel like you’ve already found the loves of your life—hold on to them, always.

From golden showers of the ancient skies, On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars, You once unfastened giant calyxes For the young earth still innocent of scars: Young gladioli with the necks of swans, Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream, Vermilion as the modesty of dawns Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim; The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright, And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose, Hérodiade blooming in the garden light, She that from wild and radiant blood arose! And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends Through the blue incense of horizons, palely Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends! Hosanna on the lute and in the censers, Lady, and of our purgatorial groves! Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer, Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love! Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom, Formed calyxes balancing the future flask, Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam For the weary poet withering on the husk.

Spring blooms had been coming in from Holland since December, but now flowers from Irish growers were arriving. Daffodils with their frilled trumpets and tissue-paper-delicate anemones and the first tulips with sturdy stems and glossy, tightly packed petals.

believed that flower was my son reincarnated. One believes the stupidest things in grief. I spoke to the flower and called it my son. And then I laughed because how ridiculous—how cruel, really—it would have been if my son was reincarnated as something so ephemeral, frail, and beautiful. I killed that first bloom with one swoop of my hand. Dead again, my son could become something else: the shell of a tortoise, strong and ancient, or a hideous fanged creature deep in the sea where he’d see wonders even he could’ve never imagined.

Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. … And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of a flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It’s a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it.

From chaos the universe was born, from void came life. From the abyss of despair came the spirit of survival. Flowers from earth. Gold from fire. I burn like fire. Little flames bloom first at my toes, then my stomach, then my heart. Now my soul is on fire. Do you feel the heat?

Do you know why the lotus is one of my favorite flowers?" I cocked my head to one side so I could see his expression. He shook his head. "This beautiful flower lives in the most vile, muddy water of swamps and bogs," I said and rubbed the smooth metal of the pendant between my fingers. He frowned. "No, seriously... the grosser the environment, the better," I said. "So let me get this straight. You like a flower that lives in disgusting places?" One of his eyebrows rose. "That ain't right." "No, I love this flower," I corrected. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, "Seriously?" "What?" You don't believe me?" "Sure, I believe you. It's just weird." "I'll tell you why, but only if you promise not to laugh," I said. He nodded. Taking a cleansing breath, I rested my head against the seat, closed my eyes, and took that scary first step. "This flower stays in the mud and muck all night long." I peeked at him without moving my head. His face had become set in the smooth lines of one who listens intently. "Then, at sunrise, it climbs toward the light and opens into a pristine bloom. After the sun goes down, the bloom sinks into the mire. Even though it spends the whole night underwater, the flower emerges every morning as beautiful as the day before." Smiling, I swiveled in my seat to face him. "I love this flower because it reminds me that we get second chances every day, no matter what muck life drags us through.

When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice it is small, but we do not criticize it as “rootless and stemless.” We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don’t condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; we do not criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place, and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change. Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is. A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; at each stage it is the same thing . . . a flower in the process of expressing its potential. The

once upon a time, i met a flower. she was so innocent, yet so wise. she was glitter and wildness. softness and sweet fragrance. she was a flock of fireflies that danced through the forest and swam naked in moonlight. she was the first soul i bared myself to, only one i was completely honest with about the things that shamed me...we wandered through the world in a bubble of our own making, floating free, full of pastels so colorful, full of fairy dust, sunbeams, and feathers. we drew people towards us like sirens in the water, wanting what we had. but we fluttered away like butterflies hopping from lily pad to lily pad, giggling all the while. we told each other the real hard truth, and listened, and laughed and cried out our hearts. when i was going through a tough time, she once told me to pick a place, anywhere in the world, and she’d be there with me, even if she couldn't be...she was my flower. she taught me about generosity, about giving with deep trust that it would return somehow somewhere. and it always does. she taught me to love people for who they are, and to just let them be, in their own flower field. i met a flower. she taught me to live in love. to bloom, and listen. now i am alive, in love

It was morning again and the air was light and sweet. Silver hoarfrost cloaked golden leaves, and cobwebs were wreathed upon dewy grass and shrubs. There was a hint of snow on distant hills on the moor-side of this place, and to both sides of the slim river that moved between the harvested fields bloomed winter flowers.

It wasn’t until the 2016 election that I knew the time had come. As I watched the US I thought I knew devolve, seemingly overnight, into an unrecognizable landscape—a place where political pundits threw up Nazi salutes in front of news cameras, unafraid—a place where swastikas bloomed like fetid flowers on the walls of synagogues and mosques—I knew the time had come. I called Jodi Warshaw, my first editor at Lake Union Publishing, and told her I’d finally found a World War II subject I wanted to write . . . and I wanted to write it now. Jodi agreed that the time was right for a story of resistance—of an ordinary person taking a stand against hate.

This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals sails appeared charmed. They blazed red in the day and silver at night, like a magician’s cloak, hinting at mysteries concealed beneath, which Tella planned to uncover that night. Drunken laughter floated above her as Tella delved deeper into the ship’s underbelly in search of Nigel the Fortune-teller. Her first evening on the vessel she’d made the mistake of sleeping, not realizing until the following day that Legend’s performers had switched their waking hours to prepare for the next Caraval. They slumbered in the day and woke after sunset. All Tella had learned her first day aboard La Esmeralda was that Nigel was on the ship, but she had yet to actually see him. The creaking halls beneath decks were like the bridges of Caraval, leading different places at different hours and making it difficult to know who stayed in which room. Tella wondered if Legend had designed it that way, or if it was just the unpredictable nature of magic. She imagined Legend in his top hat, laughing at the question and at the idea that magic had more control than he did. For many, Legend was the definition of magic. When she had first arrived on Isla de los Sueños, Tella suspected everyone could be Legend. Julian had so many secrets that she’d questioned if Legend’s identity was one of them, up until he’d briefly died. Caspar, with his sparkling eyes and rich laugh, had played the role of Legend in the last game, and at times he’d been so convincing Tella wondered if he was actually acting. At first sight, Dante, who was almost too beautiful to be real, looked like the Legend she’d always imagined. Tella could picture Dante’s wide shoulders filling out a black tailcoat while a velvet top hat shadowed his head. But the more Tella thought about Legend, the more she wondered if he even ever wore a top hat. If maybe the symbol was another thing to throw people off. Perhaps Legend was more magic than man and Tella had never met him in the flesh at all. The boat rocked and an actual laugh pierced the quiet. Tella froze. The laughter ceased but the air in the thin corridor shifted. What had smelled of salt and wood and damp turned thick and velvet-sweet. The scent of roses. Tella’s skin prickled; gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. At her feet a puddle of petals formed a seductive trail of red. Tella might not have known Legend’s true name, but she knew he favored red and roses and games. Was this his way of toying with her? Did he know what she was up to? The bumps on her arms crawled up to her neck and into her scalp as her newest pair of slippers crushed the tender petals. If Legend knew what she was after, Tella couldn’t imagine he would guide her in the correct direction, and yet the trail of petals was too tempting to avoid. They led to a door that glowed copper around the edges. She turned the knob. And her world transformed into a garden, a paradise made of blossoming flowers and bewitching romance. The walls were formed of moonlight. The ceiling was made of roses that dripped down toward the table in the center of the room, covered with plates of cakes and candlelight and sparkling honey wine. But none of it was for Tella. It was all for Scarlett. Tella had stumbled into her sister’s love story and it was so romantic it was painful to watch. Scarlett stood across the chamber. Her full ruby gown bloomed brighter than any flowers, and her glowing skin rivaled the moon as she gazed up at Julian. They touched nothing except each other. While Scarlett pressed her lips to Julian’s, his arms wrapped around her as if he’d found the one thing he never wanted to let go of. This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.

MAY IN MINNEAPOLIS IS LILAC TIME. AS IF TO COMPENSATE for the punitive winter, the city explodes with flowers overnight—making it, if only for a week or two, one of the most beautiful places on earth. First there are sunny starbursts of forsythia; then the cherry and dogwood trees burst into life, showering petals everywhere, pink and cream, drifting thick as snow on the sidewalks. But it is the lilacs that truly herald the coming of spring: lavender and white and blue and sometimes a purple deep as grapes, they bloom in the alleys and over backyard fences and in graveyards. Beauty is everywhere, including the most unexpected places. There is no respite from it.

My body glows in every vein and blooms To fullest flower since I first knew thee, My walk unconscious pride and power assumes; Who art thou then- thou who awaitest me? When from the past I draw myself the while I lose old traits as leaves of autumn fall; I only know the radiance of thy smile, Like the soft gleam of stars, transforming all. - Offering

Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman - almost a bride - was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.

How much more interior can you get, after all, than the interior of bones? It's the center of the center of things. If marrow were a geological formation, it would be magma roiling under the earth's mantle. If it were a plant, it would be a delicate moss that grows only in the highest crags of Mount Everest, blooming with tiny white flowers for three days in the Nepalese spring. If it were a memory, it would be your first one, your most painful and repressed one, the one that has made you who you are.

Before He called me forth from the grave, Jesus wept. His was not the loud, frantic keening of the women who mourned outside my tomb. His was a sigh and a groan and a single salty tear. It was, at first, almost imperceptible, even to those standing closest to Him. But His sigh shook the universe, and the place where I was quaked. I stood in the midst of those who watched and waited for all things to be set right. Jesus groaned, and the heads of angels and saints turned to look down upon the earth in wonder. His tear trickled down his cheek, and a spring burst forth at my feet. Pure, clear water spilled from its banks and flowed down a mountainside, leaving a myriad of new stars, like flowers, blooming and rising in its wake. I remember thinking, On a clear night, constellations above the earth reflect on the still surface of the sea. But here? Only one of Jesus’ tears contains a galaxy. My eternal companions and I listened. We heard His voice echo from Bethany across the universe! He commanded, “Roll away the stone!” We all waited in anticipation for the next word from His lips. Then Jesus spoke my name: “Lazarus!” Surely He could not mean me, I thought. But all the same, I whispered, “Here I am, Lord.” Centuries have come and gone since His holy sob ripped me loose from timeless conversation with the ageless ones. Ten thousand, thousand scholars and saints have asked, “Why? What made the King of Heaven bow His head and cover His eyes and spill holy tears onto the earth? Why? Why did Jesus weep?

The only things in the room that she felt any connection to were half a dozen flower postcards pinned to the wall above her desk. The red and white tulip by Judith Leyster. The vase of white lilac by Manet. The bowl of blowsy roses by Henri Fantin-Latour. The vase of tumbling blooms by Brueghel- lilies and tulips, fritillaries and daffodils, carnations and snowdrops, cornflowers and peonies and anemones. Those flowers had all died four hundred years ago, but that first week back at work, they planted a seed in Lara's heart.

Are those chocolate chip?'' Cole reaches her first and claims one. ''Oh, my godness.'' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. ''Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.'' ''River did it.'' Cole smirks at the guy. ''And he insulted my mom. And my dad.'' ''River Marks.'' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. ''How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!'' River glares at Cole before bowing his head. ''I'm sorry, Nana.'' ''The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.'' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. ''Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.'' ''Yes, ma'am,'' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar. ''Good, good.'' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. ''I'll leave you kids to your practice.'' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves. ''Are you a rose?'' River sneers at Cole. ''Or a lilly?'' ''Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.'' Cole responds.

Despite the challenges, S'Apposentu slowly bloomed into one of Cagliari's most important restaurants. Roberto brought with him the hundreds of little lessons he had learned on the road and transposed them onto Sardinian tradition and terreno. He turned roasted onions into ice cream and peppered it with wild flowers and herbs. He reimagined porceddu, Sardinia's heroic roast pig, as a dense terrine punctuated with local fruits. He made himself into a master: of bread baking, cheese making, meat curing. In 2006, Michelin rewarded him with a star, one of the first ever awarded in Sardinia.

Thus it can be said that, until the fifteenth century, Black Africa never lost its civilization. Frobenius reports: Not that the first European navigators at the end of the Middle Ages failed to make some very remarkable observations. When they reached the Bay of Guinea and alighted at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find well-planned streets bordered for several leagues by two rows of trees; for days they traversed a countryside covered by magnificent fields, inhabited by men in colorful attire that they had woven themselves! More to the south, in the Kingdom of the Congo, a teeming crowd clad in silk and velvet, large States, well ordered down to the smallest detail, powerful rulers, prosperous industries. Civilized to the marrow of their bones! Entirely similar was the condition of the lands on the east coast, Mozambique, for example. The revelations of the navigators from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries provide positive proof that Black Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara, was still in full bloom, in all the splendor of harmonious, well-organized civilizations. This flowering the European conquistadors destroyed as they advanced.

On the following morning the little hut on the Alm opened wide its doors and windows as if to drink up the early sunshine. Days went by. The warmth of the spring sun woke up first the little blue gentians - those with a white star in the center; then, one by one, all the other lovely flowers opened their petals. There were jonquils and red primroses and little golden rockroses with thorns on the edge of their petals. They all bloomed in their brightest colors while Peter watched the miracle taking place, as he had watched it every spring since he could remember. He had never quite seen the beauty of it, however, until Heidi had come to show him.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

There's no such thing as witches. But there used to be. It used to be the air was so thick with magic you could taste it on your tongue like ash. Witches lurked in every tangled wood and waited at every midnight-crossroad with sharp-toothed smiles. They conversed with dragons on lonely mountaintops and rode rowan-wood brooms across full moons; they charmed the stars to dance beside them on the summer solstice and rode to battle with familiars at their heels. It used to be witches were wild as crows and fearless as foxes, because magic blazed bright and the night was theirs. But then came the plague and the purges. The dragons were slain and the witches were burned and the night belonged to men with torches and crosses. Witching isn’t all gone, of course. My grandmother, Mama Mags, says they can’t ever kill magic because it beats like a great red heartbeat on the other side of everything, that if you close your eyes you can feel it thrumming beneath the soles of your feet, thumpthumpthump. It’s just a lot better-behaved than it used to be. Most respectable folk can’t even light a candle with witching, these days, but us poor folk still dabble here and there. Witch-blood runs thick in the sewers, the saying goes. Back home every mama teaches her daughters a few little charms to keep the soup-pot from boiling over or make the peonies bloom out of season. Every daddy teaches his sons how to spell ax-handles against breaking and rooftops against leaking. Our daddy never taught us shit, except what a fox teaches chickens — how to run, how to tremble, how to outlive the bastard — and our mama died before she could teach us much of anything. But we had Mama Mags, our mother’s mother, and she didn’t fool around with soup-pots and flowers. The preacher back home says it was God’s will that purged the witches from the world. He says women are sinful by nature and that magic in their hands turns naturally to rot and ruin, like the first witch Eve who poisoned the Garden and doomed mankind, like her daughter’s daughters who poisoned the world with the plague. He says the purges purified the earth and shepherded us into the modern era of Gatling guns and steamboats, and the Indians and Africans ought to be thanking us on their knees for freeing them from their own savage magics. Mama Mags said that was horseshit, and that wickedness was like beauty: in the eye of the beholder. She said proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way. She taught us everything important comes in threes: little pigs, bill goats gruff, chances to guess unguessable names. Sisters. There wer ethree of us Eastwood sisters, me and Agnes and Bella, so maybe they'll tell our story like a witch-tale. Once upon a time there were three sisters. Mags would like that, I think — she always said nobody paid enough attention to witch-tales and whatnot, the stories grannies tell their babies, the secret rhymes children chant among themselves, the songs women sing as they work. Or maybe they won't tell our story at all, because it isn't finished yet. Maybe we're just the very beginning, and all the fuss and mess we made was nothing but the first strike of the flint, the first shower of sparks. There's still no such thing as witches. But there will be.

So he stopped at the first of them, a frigid hothouse whose front tipped forward over the street in defiance of gravity, taste, and ordinance; inside, the tender daytime flowers could be seen huddling in family groups beneath a constant, unseen sun, and behind them was the hermetic door to the dark Cactus Room where the shy nocturnal plants, genus cereus, could bloom in privacy at any hour. Vivien, once out of the car, appeared less constrained. She did not have that stiffness so many have on first entering bars, that air of waiting stubbornly for alcohol to loosen them, which so often presages their manner when it comes' time for bed. She was already excited when the martinis came.

After all, as a toddler was not a dandelion bloom the first object of nature you deemed beautiful and valuable enough to present as a gift to the person you loved most in the world, your mother? And did your mother not put the blossom in a glass of water and set it where she could admire it while she washed dishes? I fear that suburban children whose yards are subject to Four-Step chemical programs will never hold a dandelion flower -- let alone a buttercup -- under each other's chins to see the intense yellow election which signifies that one loves butter. (Who doesn't love butter?) Nor will then puff on the ethereal seed head, startline the cat and sending the little tufts of silk off on their mission.

Before he called me forth from the grave, Jesus wept. His was not the loud, frantic keening of the women who mourned outside my tomb. His was a sigh and a groan and a single salty tear. It was, at first, almost imperceptible, even to those standing closest to him. But his sigh shook the universe, and the place where I was quaked. I stood in the midst of those who watched and waited for all things to be set right. Jesus groaned, and the heads of angels and saints turned to look down upon the earth in wonder. His tear trickled down his cheek, and a spring burst forth at my feet. Pure, clear water spilled from its banks and flowed down a mountainside, leaving a myriad of new stars, like flowers, blooming and rising in its wake.

The maid deposits a printed, cotton cushion on the floor in front of the alcove-recess, invites the guest to be seated in that place of honor, and then removes herself. Suzuki first inspects the room. He begins by examining the scroll displayed in the alcove: its Chinese characters, allegedly written by Mokuan, that master calligrapher of the Zen sect, are, of course, faked, but they state that flowers are in bloom and that spring is come to all the world. He next turns his attention to some early-flowering cherry-blossoms arranged in one of those celadon vases which they turn out cheap in Kyoto. Then, when his roving glance chances to fall upon the cushion provided for his particular convenience, what should he find but, planted serenely smack in its center, a squatting cat. I need hardly add that the cat in question is my lordly self.

Anna rushed onward, past another row of homes, and found her way to the farm where they kept their chicken coop. She opened the netting to collect a fresh batch of eggs. "Morning, Erik, Elin, and Elise," she greeted the hens. "I've got to move quick today. Freya is coming!" She gathered at least a dozen eggs, closed up the coop, and carefully carried the bucket and the tea back to the house. An older man was pulling a cart with flowers down the street. "Morning, Anna!" "Morning, Erling!" Anna called. "Gorgeous blooms today. Do you have my favorite?" Erling produced two stems of golden crocuses. The yellow flowers were as bright as the sun. Anna inhaled their sweet aroma. "Thank you! Come by later for some fresh bread. First batch should be out of the oven midmorning." "Thank you, Anna! I will!" he said, and Anna hurried along, trying not to crack the eggs or stop again. She had a habit of stopping to talk. A lot.

Then, remembering that strange sword just to her side, she leaned over the mountain edge to inspect it. The hilt was dull with age, but still gold, with short wings at the base of the blade that pointed forward. It had to be hundreds of years old. Mulan was about to leave it, but there was something inscribed on the blade itself. She could see only the first word. It was the same as in her name: Fa. Flower. Curious now, she reached down and tried to wrench the sword free. It was stuck tight. "Let me help." Shang knelt beside her and clasped the edge of the hilt. Together, they pulled. Out slid the sword. The weight of it nearly tipped Mulan over the mountain, but she caught herself in time and backed up away from the ledge. Catching her breath, she laid the sword on the grass, wiping it clean of dirt and grime. The characters on the blade glittered in the moonlight. "'The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.

While the others tended the flowers outside, the kitchen was her garden, where feasts and banquets bloomed. At twenty-six, she couldn't imagine ever loving anything as much as cooking. Nothing fancy though; no big white plates and tiny morsels. Candy cooked to feed the soul. Flavor and quantity were of equal importance. She had become Thornfield's resident cook when she dropped out of high school and convinced June she was safe with knives. It's in your blood, Twig said after a bite of her first cassava cake, fresh from the oven. These are your gifts, June said when Candy served her first platter of spring rolls with mango chutney, made from homegrown vegetables and herbs. It was true; when she was cooking or baking, it was almost as if a deeper, hidden knowledge took over her hands, her instincts, her tastebuds. She thrived in the kitchen, spurred by the idea that maybe her mother was a chef, or her father a baker. Cooking soothed the incision-like cut she felt inside whenever she thought that she might never know.

T'here are no gods left to watch, I’m afraid. And there are no gods left to help you now, Aelin Galathynius.' Aelin smiled, and Goldryn burned brighter. 'I am a god.'” “You do not yield.” “Live, Manon. Live.” “And far away, across the snow-covered mountains, on a barren plain before the ruins of a once-great city, a flower began to bloom” “Aelin looked at Chaol and Dorian and sobbed. Opened her arms to them, and wept as they held each other. 'I love you both,' she whispered. 'And no matter what may happen, no matter how far we may be, that will never change.'” “Yet the songs would mention this—that the Lion fell before the western gate of Orynth, defending the city and his son.” “'We came,' Manon said, loud enough that all on the city walls could hear, 'to honor a promise made to Aelin Galathynius. To fight for what she promised us.' Darrow said quietly, 'And what was that?' Manon smiled then. 'A better world.'” “Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart.b'It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.'” “'Rise,' Darrow said, 'Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen.'” “One blink for yes. Two for no. Three for Are you all right? Four for I am here, I am with you. Five for This is real, you are awake.” And she said to Abraxos, touching his spin, 'I love you.' It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.” “Lord Lorcan Lochan?” Chaol and Yrene began bickering, laughing as they did, but Dorian strode to the edge of the aerie. Watched that white-haired rider and the wyvern with silver wings become distant as they sailed toward the horizon. Dorian smiled. And found himself, for the first time in a while, looking forward to tomorrow.” “'I took his name,' Erawan spat, writhing as the words flowed from his tongue under Damaris's power. 'I wiped it away from existence. Yet he only remembered it once. Only once. The first time He behelded you.' Tears slid down Dorian's face at the unbearable truth.” “Gavriel smiled at him. 'Close the gate, Aedion,' was all his father said. And then Gavriel stepped beyond the gates. That golden shield spreading thin.

The first flicker of dawn licked the eastern sky. The light grew stronger, revealing that the white larkspur had turned dark crimson overnight. Within her shrine, a new and beautiful light gray flower sprang from the ground, surrounding her. Asphodel. Kore touched the gentle flowers growing around her and shifted the coloring of her dress to a soft white, mimicking the color of the blossoms. How beautiful they were... like last night, like him, though she knew 'beautiful' was seldom applied to men, and was too soft a word for him anyway. Asphodel... she was the Maiden of the Flowers and knew that's what these were intuitively, but tried to remember where she had heard that name- and what their significance was. She had only ever seen asphodel as a gnarled dark gray weed. It was one of the few plants her mother would rip out of the fields wherever she had seen it. Kore had always trailed behind her, doing the same. She had never seen asphodel bud and and blossom. The white blooms were thin, veined with a centerline of crimson, six petals with bright filaments bursting from the center and ending in deep red anthers. They were beautiful and foreign.

were more than mere insects. Over time I realized the bees could tell my emotional or energetic state. When I embodied kindness around them, they treated me with the same. A cloud of exuberance surrounded us, as though the bees were templating euphoria into the air. I want you to know I didn’t just tear off my bee suit one day and “become one with the bees.” That took years. But eventually I did retire my bee suit. The first time I walked right up to the hives wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, I felt a bit anxious and self-absorbed, but then I remembered to turn my thoughts away from myself, to open myself to the bees and let them feel me out — which they did. They landed on my bare arms and licked my skin for the salty minerals. When I held a finger next to the entrance, a sweet little bee delicately walked onto my fingertip and faced me. She looked right into my eyes, and for the first time, we saw each other. And so I became part of bee life. Becoming Kin I soon found myself having more intuition about the hives. One morning in early spring, before the flowers had come into bloom, I suddenly had the idea that I should check one of my hives. I found the bees unexpectedly out of food; so I fed them honey saved from the year before. That call I intuitively heard from the hive likely saved its life. Another time I had the feeling that a distant hive in the east pasture was on the verge of swarming. When I walked up to see, sure enough, they were. Events like this taught me to trust my intuition more, and listening to my intuition continues to bring me into a closer relationship with all the hives. In my sixth year with bees, something new happened. I had begun a morning practice of contemplation, quieting my mind and opening my heart. I entered this prayerful state, asking for guidance, direction, courage, and truth. Even though I didn’t mention honeybees, they immediately began appearing in my thoughts and passing me information I had never read or learned from other sources. I believe the sincerity of my questions opened a door. When the information began coming to me, I listened with attentiveness, respect, and gratitude. The more I listened, the more information they shared. Since my first intuitive conversation with the bees, I have had many others. At first I didn’t know how to explain where the information came from, and that bothered me. I told my husband’s

I watched her face. She reminded me of a Francis Bacon painting, fading in and out of her resemblance to anything human, struggling to resist disappearing into an undifferentiated world of pain. I brushed her hair out of her face, made braids again. ㅤㅤㅤWomen’s bravery, I thought as I worked on her hair from bottom to top, untangling the black mass. I would never be able to go through this. The pain came in waves, in sheets, starting in her belly and extending outward, a flower of pain blooming through her body, a jagged steel lotus. ㅤㅤㅤI couldn’t stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He’d have had to change his whole philosophy. ㅤㅤㅤThe mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain. Gasping on the bed, Yvonne bordered on the unrecognizable, disintegrating into a ripe collection of nerves, fibers, sacs, and waters and the ancient clock in the blood. Compared to this eternal body, the individual was a smoke, a cloud. The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am.

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither the Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For Childhood is short—a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day— And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes. Amen

Cups and Rings and Drawings. I stopped by a famed park, Picked a blank sheet And drew a cup. For me, it represented me holding myself up in a storm, It represented the start of life, Something to pour out every lesson learnt Out of every misfortune we’ve ever been. The cup — the container to hold chocolate drink Water. Wine and strawberries. I drew a ring, A marriage between blessing and joy The bloom of flowers in spring The sprouting of leaves in midsummer And the smell of fresh grasses at night. I drew Monalisa I painted art I became Michaelangelo Da Vinci I became the Renaissance I healed through art “Don’t you know that you are gods?” So the first day, I cleared the storms out of my life. The second day, I dried all my tears The third day, I reinvented myself. The fourth day, I finally remembered what it felt like to be happy Like two children drawing arts on a canvass. Delilah & Annabelle Arts curled out of girls trying to reinvent the world Or the colours of the rainbow. The fifth day, I opened the windows wide To let the lights shine in. “When I’m down on my knees you’re how I pray.” The sixth day I created my favourite masterpiece — Baroque. The seventh day, I admired myself in the mirror. I missed me I missed the time I had so much optimism I miss you And I miss writing so innocently.

The rapid growth of Message- combined with an outpouring of florists offering consultations in the language of flowers to the streams of brides Marlena and I turned away- caused a subtle but concrete shift in the Bay Area flower industry. Marlena reported that peony, marigold, and lavender lingered in their plastic buckets at the flower market while tulips, lilac, and passionflower sold out before the sun rose. For the first time anyone could remember, jonquil became available long after its natural bloom season had ended. By the end of July, bold brides carried ceramic bowls of strawberries or fragrant clusters of fennel, and no one questioned their aesthetics but rather marveled at the simplicity of their desire. If the trajectory continued, I realized, Message would alter the quantities of anger, grief, and mistrust growing in the earth on a massive scale. Farmers would uproot fields of foxglove to plant yarrow, the soft clusters of pink, yellow, and cream the cure to a broken heart. The prices of sage, ranunculus, and stock would steadily increase. Plum trees would be planted for the sole purpose of harvesting their delicate, clustered blossoms and sunflowers would fall permanently out of fashion, disappearing from flower stands, craft stores, and country kitchens. Thistle would be cleared compulsively from empty lots and overgrown gardens.

In the white bowl, the paper caught fire, burning like a desperate flower, blooming and dying at the same time. Its scents came on tendrils of smoke, wrapping themselves around me. We missed you. I inhaled, and Victoria's kitchen disappeared around me. It was early morning in the cabin, winter; I could smell the woodstove working to keep the frost at bay. My father had fed the sourdough starter, and the tang of it played off the warm scent of coffee grounds. I could smell my own warmth in the air, rising from the blankets I'd tossed aside. I remembered that morning. It was the first time I ever saw the machine. I must have been three, maybe four years old. I'd woken up and seen my father, standing in the middle of the room, a box in his hands, bright and shiny and magical. I remembered racing across the floor, my bare feet tingling from the chill. What is it, Papa? It's wonderful. I want to know. And he'd put the shiny box aside and lifted me up high and said, You are the most wonderful thing in the world, little lark. The last of the paper crumbled to ash. I stood there, trying to remember what had happened next- but I couldn't. Did my father show me the machine, or did we go outside and chop wood? You'd think I'd remember, but I didn't. What I remembered was how it felt to be held in his arms. To be loved that way, before everything else happened. And in that moment, I felt whole. "Oh," I heard Victoria say, and when I turned to her, her eyes were filled with tears.

Not long after I'd first met Doc, we were sitting on our rock on the hill behind the rose garden and I had asked him why I was a sinner and what I had done to be condemned to eternal hell fire unless I was born again. He sat for a long time looking over the valley, and then he said, :Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man ants always God should be there to condemn this on and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business."He paused and smiled "In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven.: He looked at me, his deep blue eyes sharp and penetrating. "This is the faith in God the cactus has". We had sat for a while before he spoke again. "it is better just to get on with the business living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day. Absoloodle.

Ione I. AH, yes, 't is sweet still to remember, Though 't were less painful to forget; For while my heart glows like an ember, Mine eyes with sorrow's drops are wet, And, oh, my heart is aching yet. It is a law of mortal pain That old wounds, long accounted well, Beneath the memory's potent spell, Will wake to life and bleed again. So 't is with me; it might be better If I should turn no look behind, — If I could curb my heart, and fetter From reminiscent gaze my mind, Or let my soul go blind — go blind! But would I do it if I could? Nay! ease at such a price were spurned; For, since my love was once returned, All that I suffer seemeth good. I know, I know it is the fashion, When love has left some heart distressed, To weight the air with wordful passion; But I am glad that in my breast I ever held so dear a guest. Love does not come at every nod, Or every voice that calleth 'hasten;' He seeketh out some heart to chasten, And whips it, wailing, up to God! Love is no random road wayfarer Who Where he may must sip his glass. Love is the King, the Purple-Wearer, Whose guard recks not of tree or grass To blaze the way that he may pass. What if my heart be in the blast That heralds his triumphant way; Shall I repine, shall I not say: 'Rejoice, my heart, the King has passed!' In life, each heart holds some sad story — The saddest ones are never told. I, too, have dreamed of fame and glory, And viewed the future bright with gold; But that is as a tale long told. Mine eyes have lost their youthful flash, My cunning hand has lost its art; I am not old, but in my heart The ember lies beneath the ash. I loved! Why not? My heart was youthful, My mind was filled with healthy thought. He doubts not whose own self is truthful, Doubt by dishonesty is taught; So loved! boldly, fearing naught. I did not walk this lowly earth; Mine was a newer, higher sphere, Where youth was long and life was dear, And all save love was little worth. Her likeness! Would that I might limn it, As Love did, with enduring art; Nor dust of days nor death may dim it, Where it lies graven on my heart, Of this sad fabric of my life a part. I would that I might paint her now As I beheld her in that day, Ere her first bloom had passed away, And left the lines upon her brow. A face serene that, beaming brightly, Disarmed the hot sun's glances bold. A foot that kissed the ground so lightly, He frowned in wrath and deemed her cold, But loved her still though he was old. A form where every maiden grace Bloomed to perfection's richest flower, — The statued pose of conscious power, Like lithe-limbed Dian's of the chase. Beneath a brow too fair for frowning, Like moon-lit deeps that glass the skies Till all the hosts above seem drowning, Looked forth her steadfast hazel eyes, With gaze serene and purely wise. And over all, her tresses rare, Which, when, with his desire grown weak, The Night bent down to kiss her cheek, Entrapped and held him captive there. This was Ione; a spirit finer Ne'er burned to ash its house of clay; A soul instinct with fire diviner Ne'er fled athwart the face of day, And tempted Time with earthly stay. Her loveliness was not alone Of face and form and tresses' hue; For aye a pure, high soul shone through Her every act: this was Ione.

I'd painted nearly every surface in the main room. And not with just broad swaths of colour, but with decorations- little images. Some were basic: colours of icicles drooping down the sides of the threshold. They melted into the first shoots of spring, then burst into full blooms of summer, before brightening and deepening into fall leaves. I'd painted a ring of flowers round the card table by the window, leaves and crackling flames around the dining table. But in between the intricate decorations, I'd painted them. Bits and pieces of Mor, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Amren... and Rhys. Mor went up to the large hearth, where I'd painted the mantel in black shimmering with veins of gold and red. Up close, it was a solid pretty bit of paint. But from the couch... 'Illyrian wings,' she said. 'Ugh, they'll never stop gloating about it.' But she went to the window, which I'd framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. 'Nice,' she said, surveying the room again. Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. 'Why,' she said, 'are Amren's eyes there?' Indeed, right above the door, in the centre of the archway, I'd painted a pair of glowing silver eyes. 'Because she's always watching.' Mor snorted. 'That simply won't do. Paint my eyes next to hers. So the males of this family will know we're both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk for a week straight.' 'They do that?' They used to.' Before Amarantha. 'Every autumn, the three of them would lock themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they'd come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart to know that from now on, they'll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.

Creativity is alive And thriving in my body. The energy you bring out in me Is within me infinitely. My power is overflowing. My lips are soft and welcoming To the exhale, The new Braille, The silence that persists After our moans die away, I look at myself and say, "Root down so you can burn. Beautiful girl, it's your turn To create magic within yourself. This time, without his help. Find your roots and find your fire, Be mindful of what you desire, Persist in what you know is true, Stay focused on the endless route Toward your own potential. Allow the existential Void to swallow you whole. Take on your old role: The lone seeker. Become quieter. Become meeker. Become the beauty that you seek. Embody strength if you feel weak. Find love within the walls Of this sacred temple. Let yourself shake and tremble, But keep your eyes ever fixed On the horizon Where it's rising, No revising, Fears capsizing As you sail, sail, sail Toward the wail Of your siren spirit Beckoning you to bloom The flower in your womb, The seed of creativity, Your triumphant legacy." These words, I will carry Within me as I bury Grains of wisdom In the whispers of the wind. And when I arrive To the altar of our origin, I'll be dressed in white and black, And I'll cradle that exact Feeling left on our sheets. And you'll be on your knees, Ready to receive The wholeness of my broken mind, Pried open by The sparkle gleaming in your eyes. And your hands will be full Of supple fruit and you'll Smile at me, and I will see That you have fed your hunger. You'll ooze with courage and wonder. And then, we will know That we've already lost each other A thousand times before. And I have found you As clear water after mud settles. And you have found me As a bee deep in a flower's petals. We have danced before, Pulled art out of each other's spines. We have died and birthed and died. We've already kissed a million times. This wasn't our first five act play, And it will not be the last. So when I thirst for your hands, I will sit and chant. We will meet again. We will meet again.

We need more baskets,” Pandora said triumphantly, entering the hall. The twins, who were clearly having a splendid time, had adorned themselves outlandishly. Cassandra was dressed in a green opera cloak with a jeweled feather ornament affixed to her hair. Pandora had tucked a light blue lace parasol beneath one arm, and a pair of lawn tennis rackets beneath the other, and was wearing a flowery diadem headdress that had slipped partially over one eye. “From the looks of it,” Kathleen said, “you’ve done enough shopping already.” Cassandra looked concerned. “Oh, no, we still have at least eighty departments to visit.” Kathleen couldn’t help glancing at Devon, who was trying, without success, to stifle a grin. It was the first time she had seen him truly smile in days. Enthusiastically the girls lugged the baskets to her and began to set objects on the counter in an unwieldy pile…perfumed soaps, powders, pomades, stockings, books, new corset laces and racks of hairpins, artificial flowers, tins of biscuits, licorice pastilles and barley sweets, a metal mesh tea infuser, hosiery tucked in little netted bags, a set of drawing pencils, and a tiny glass bottle filled with bright red liquid. “What is this?” Kathleen asked, picking up the bottle and viewing it suspiciously. “It’s a beautifier,” Pandora said. “Bloom of Rose,” Cassandra chimed in. Kathleen gasped as she realized what it was. “It’s rouge.” She had never even held a container of rouge before. Setting it on the counter, she said firmly, “No.” “But Kathleen--” “No to rouge,” she said, “now and for all time.” “We need to enhance our complexions,” Pandora protested. “It won’t do any harm,” Cassandra chimed in. “The bottle says that Bloom of Rose is ‘delicate and inoffensive’…It’s written right there, you see?” “The comments you would receive if you wore rouge in public would assuredly not be delicate or inoffensive. People would assume you were a fallen woman. Or worse, an actress.” Pandora turned to Devon. “Lord Trenear, what do you think?” “This is one of those times when it’s best for a man to avoid thinking altogether,” he said hastily.

she had dark chestnut hair, a heart-shaped face, large wide eyes, full lips…and appeared about as miserable as he’d ever seen a young woman, a state he suspected had something to do with the older woman at her side. His gaze slid over the matron. Well-rounded with dark hair, she was pretty despite the bloom of youth being gone—or she would be if she weren’t wearing a pursed, dissatisfied expression as she surveyed the activity in the ballroom. Adrian glanced back to the girl. “First season?” he queried, his curiosity piqued. “Yes.” Reg looked amused. “Why is no one dancing with her?” A beauty such as this should have had a full card. “No one dares ask her—and you will not either, if you value your feet.” Adrian’s eyebrows rose, his gaze turning reluctantly from the young woman to the man at his side. “She is blind as a bat and dangerous to boot,” Reg announced, nodding when Adrian looked disbelieving. “Truly, she cannot dance a step without stomping on your toes and falling about. She cannot even walk without bumping into things.” He paused, cocking one eyebrow in response to Adrian’s expression. “I know you do not believe it. I did not either…much to my own folly.” Reginald turned to glare at the girl and continued: “I was warned, but ignored it and took her in to dinner….” He glanced back at Adrian. “I was wearing dark brown trousers that night, unfortunately. She mistook my lap for a table, and set her tea on me. Or rather, she tried to. It overset and…” Reg paused, shifting uncomfortably at the memory. “Damn me if she did not burn my piffle.” Adrian stared at his cousin and then burst into laughter. Reginald looked startled, then smiled wryly. “Yes, laugh. But if I never sire another child—legitimate or not—I shall blame it solely on Lady Clarissa Crambray.” Shaking his head, Adrian laughed even harder, and it felt so good. It had been many years since he’d found anything the least bit funny. But the image of the delicate little flower along the wall mistaking Reg’s lap for a table and oversetting a cup of tea on him was priceless. “What did you do?” he got out at last. Reg shook his head and raised his hands helplessly. “What could I do? I pretended it had not happened, stayed where I was, and tried not to cry with the pain. ‘A gentleman never deigns to notice, or draw attention in any way to, a lady’s public faux pas,’” he quoted dryly, then glanced back at the girl with a sigh. “Truth to tell, I do not think she even realized what she’d done. Rumor has it she can see fine with spectacles, but she is too vain to wear them.” Still smiling, Adrian followed Reg’s gaze to the girl. Carefully taking in her wretched expression, he shook his head. “No. Not vain,” he announced, watching as the older woman beside Lady Clarissa murmured something, stood, and moved away. “Well,” Reg began, but paused when, ignoring him, Adrian moved toward the girl. Shaking his head, he muttered, “I warned you.” -Adrian & Reg

In ancient China there are four great beauties: The first so beautiful that when fish see her reflection they forget how to swim and sink. The second so beautiful that birds forget how to fly and fall. The third so beautiful that the moon refuses to shine. The fourth so beautiful that flowers refuse to bloom. I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse.

First to bloom in the primary colors of yellow, blue, and red are the Fool, the Hanged Man, and the Aeon. These three personify the powers and qualities of the three mother letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the primitive elements of air, water, and fire.69 Figure 10. Three Petals of the elemental trumps. Next to flower in the primary and secondary colors of the rainbow (scarlet, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) are the Tower, the Sun, the Magus, the Empress, the High Priestess, the Universe, and Fortune. These seven trumps personify the powers and qualities of the seven double letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the seven planets of the ancients: Mars, Sol, Mercury, Venus, Luna, Saturn, and Jupiter. Figure 11. Seven petals of the planetary trumps.

Gliding through the garden was a peacock. It might have even been thee same one I'd seen before, with a tall crown and gorgeous deep-blue chest. Arrogantly, he turned his face away from us, as if we were below his notice, and called out to the forest. From the trees came an answer, and he strutted off, king of his domain. "They are so beautiful." Pavi sighed. "Samir told me there is a flock that lives in the forest." "Roses and peacocks. It's like the setting for a fairy tale." I looked around. "It's going to take more than a kiss to save this place." I thought of the single rose blooming into the parlor when Samir and I had first walked through. "But it does feel sometimes like it's under an enchantment." One tall rose drew my eye, a castle atop a small hill, with tangles of white damask roses around it, as if on guard. The rose was orange and yellow with touches of pink, and I recognized it immediately from a hundred of my mother's paintings. It seemed larger than others of the same type, as haughty as the peacock, and I rounded the overgrown white roses to see if I could find a way in. Pavi, however, was enchanted by the damasks. "These are prime," she cried, burying her nose in a mass of them. "The perfect flower for rosewater. It will be clear and very, very fragrant.

Eden by Maisie Aletha Smikle In the garden Eden Streams of tranquility glide Flowers magnificently bloom Adam, Eve and animals freely roam Springs sprout Waterfalls emerge Angels smile Earth and Heaven were once in sync Absent was the sting of sin There were no frost To bite the grass Causing trees to freeze There were no fierce heat To kindle a blaze There were no winds That were unkind There were no raindrops That weren't welcome All were in perfect peace All were in harmony so sweet The garden Eden Was the home of the people Handmade by the Father Precious were they Adam and Eve God's first human masterpieces They were loved God gave them a home And grew for them a lovely garden God gave them pets of all species He gave them glorious healing spas and herbs God gave them fruits and food of every kind Everything Adam and Eve had to their hearts desire An envious snake Probably a BOA Saw joy peace love and happiness And hated joy peace love and happiness BOA vowed to destroy love peace joy and happiness BOA wanted to create distrust and enmity instead BOA conspired against love peace joy and happiness And conspired to have Adam and Eve thrown out of their home BOA snatched love joy peace and happiness BOA caused the first family Adam and Eve To be thrown out of their home naked A home that was God's unencumbered gift BOA was happy when happiness left When joy love and peace took flight and went And distrust and enmity remain Where BOA can hiss and strike it's venom of loathe Until people are down Naked and have no home BOA is truly a disgrace Indeed BOA is a scrooge

The Vase The bouquet of flowers in the vase is two weeks old, Or maybe a little older? They are all wilted and dead now. The scene is much like a mass grave, Each flower has died in its own way. The first flower—the biggest in the bunch— Opened as widely as it could. Each of its petals dried up. The second one seemed as though it had tried To bend itself towards the end of her life, It broke her neck as she dried in silence. The third flower tried to close after opening, As she felt her life was coming to an end. She died closed. The fourth flower looked like she had started to sacrifice herself For the sake of everyone else around her. She, too, dropped most of her petals, And died naked, except for one or two petals. The fifth flower didn’t have time to open, Or perhaps she realized the futility of opening up in such a tight vase. She also wilted and dried prematurely and half-opened. The sixth flower died very young, Before having a chance to bloom. The colorless water in the vase is now yellowish and dead. Yes, waters die too. For colorless waters, death can be colorful. April 12, 2013

My husband had these stubby fingers, bruised and battered and stiff from his spade work in Kladno, but when it came to picking flowers, he got this dopey look on his face, he only picked those wildflowers that grew off on their own somewhere, he didn't like store-bought flowers, in fact never bought them... because picking those first snowdrops, still there under the snow, was a celebration for my husband, like going to confirmation, and I wasn't allowed to talk to him, wasn't allowed to look at him, he couldn't stand me looking at him when he was engaged in something beautiful, he always wanted to be at it alone, which was a good thing, because I was never into picking flowers myself, I had no relationship to flowers, all the flowers I ever had at home refused to bloom, as if on purpose . .

We can't expect roots to ground us, magnificent birds to surround us...or flowers to bloom from our deeds- without first planting the seeds.

Try to imagine or recall each of the following items: SIGHT Visualize the largest drinking glass in your kitchen cupboard. Recall the interior of the last car you rode in. See your favorite flower in bloom. Visualize the spots on a leopard. Which of your friends wears the brightest-colored clothes? See your favorite actor on a movie screen wearing a very revealing bathing suit. SOUND Hear a dog barking in the distance. Hear a car alarm right outside your door. Recall the voice of your favorite grade-school teacher. Listen to a familiar melody.

Modern natural science experiences the emerging of seeds as a chemical process that is interpolated in terms of the grinding gears of the mechanistically viewed interaction between seeds, the condition of the soil, and thermal radiation. In this situation, the modern mind sees only mechanistic cause- and-effect relationships within chemical procedures that have particular effects following upon them. Modern natural science—chemistry no less than physics, biology no less than physics and chemistry—are and remain, so long as they exist, ‘mechanistic.’ Additionally, ‘dynamics’ is a mechanics of ‘power.’ How else could modern [89] natural science ‘verify’ itself in ‘technology’ (as one says)? The technical efficaciousness and applicability of modern natural science is not, however, the subsequent proof of the ‘truth’ of science: rather, the practical technology of modern natural science is itself only possible because modern natural science as a whole, in its metaphysical essence, is itself already merely an application of ‘technology,’ where ‘technology’ means here something other than only what engineers bring about. The oft-quoted saying of Goethe’s—namely, that the fruitful alone is the true—is already nihilism. Indeed, when the time comes when we no longer merely fiddle around with artworks and literature in terms of their value for education or intellectual history, we should perhaps examine our so-called ‘classics’ more closely. Moreover, Goethe’s view of nature is in its essence no different from Newton’s; the former depends along with the latter on the ground of modern (and especially Leibnizian) metaphysics, which one finds present in every object and every process available to us living today. The fact that we, however, when considering a seed, still see how something closed emerges and, as emerging, comes forth, may seem insubstantial, outdated, and half-poetic compared to the perspective of the objective determination and explanation belonging to the modern understanding of the germination process. The agricultural chemist, but also the modern physicist, have, as the saying goes, ‘nothing to do’ with φύσις. Indeed, it would be a fool’s errand even to try to persuade them that they could have ‘something to do’ with the Greek experience of φύσις. Now, the Greek essence of φύσις is in no way a generalization of what those today would consider the naïve experience of the emerging of seeds and flowers and the emergence of the sun. Rather, to the contrary, the original experience of emerging and of coming-forth from out of the concealed and veiled is the relation to the ‘light’ in whose luminance the [90] seed and the flower are first grasped in their emerging, and in which is seen the manner by which the seed ‘is’ in the sprouting, and the flower ‘is’ in the blooming.

Modern natural science experiences the emerging of seeds as a chemical process that is interpolated in terms of the grinding gears of the mechanistically viewed interaction between seeds, the condition of the soil, and thermal radiation. In this situation, the modern mind sees only mechanistic cause- and-effect relationships within chemical procedures that have particular effects following upon them. Modern natural science—chemistry no less than physics, biology no less than physics and chemistry—are and remain, so long as they exist, ‘mechanistic.’ Additionally, ‘dynamics’ is a mechanics of ‘power.’ How else could modern natural science ‘verify’ itself in ‘technology’ (as one says)? The technical efficaciousness and applicability of modern natural science is not, however, the subsequent proof of the ‘truth’ of science: rather, the practical technology of modern natural science is itself only possible because modern natural science as a whole, in its metaphysical essence, is itself already merely an application of ‘technology,’ where ‘technology’ means here something other than only what engineers bring about. The oft-quoted saying of Goethe’s—namely, that the fruitful alone is the true—is already nihilism. Indeed, when the time comes when we no longer merely fiddle around with artworks and literature in terms of their value for education or intellectual history, we should perhaps examine our so-called ‘classics’ more closely. Moreover, Goethe’s view of nature is in its essence no different from Newton’s; the former depends along with the latter on the ground of modern (and especially Leibnizian) metaphysics, which one finds present in every object and every process available to us living today. The fact that we, however, when considering a seed, still see how something closed emerges and, as emerging, comes forth, may seem insubstantial, outdated, and half-poetic compared to the perspective of the objective determination and explanation belonging to the modern understanding of the germination process. The agricultural chemist, but also the modern physicist, have, as the saying goes, ‘nothing to do’ with φύσις. Indeed, it would be a fool’s errand even to try to persuade them that they could have ‘something to do’ with the Greek experience of φύσις. Now, the Greek essence of φύσις is in no way a generalization of what those today would consider the naïve experience of the emerging of seeds and flowers and the emergence of the sun. Rather, to the contrary, the original experience of emerging and of coming-forth from out of the concealed and veiled is the relation to the ‘light’ in whose luminance the seed and the flower are first grasped in their emerging, and in which is seen the manner by which the seed ‘is’ in the sprouting, and the flower ‘is’ in the blooming.

When I saw her! It was mid day, it was a sunny noon, When she passed through, I felt the shimmer of the moon, And for a moment I believed everything about her was true, Her eyes that radiated with the charm of the day, Her wavy arms that moved like the waves of calm and graceful sea, Her beautiful face that you would notice anyway, And when she passed by, you hoped this is what you would always and forever see, Her every step that led her somewhere, Made you forget your errands, because you only wished to be with her, Wherever she went, just anywhere, And you imagined a life with her, only with her, And when she spoke to someone else, You cursed the skies for this prejudice, For in that moment you wanted to be this someone, and not anyone else, And you wanted to rewrite the fate’s treatise, So that whenever she talked, she only talked to you, Whenever she passed by someone in the street, She first ogled at you, And felt the desire that you were the only one she wished to meet, But right now, she just passed by and I saw her walk away, Until she had reached far, and become a distant star, And now I only keep gazing at the sky every night and day, And I deal with the never ending inner war, Where she still peeps through all my memories, Where she still makes me believe what I saw, and felt in that moment was true, And it makes me feel like these helpless daisies, Who can do nothing, but just wait for the winter to pass and hope the sky will once again turn blue, So I am a flower that is rooted in its place and its faith, And I only grow in the field of her beauty, That is what my heart feels and that is what my mind always sayeth, For sometimes to love and to believe is the noblest duty! And I love her still although she is a star so distant, Rescued by my memories that form the only bridge, Between what I felt then, what I so long to feel now, ah it is a feeling so eminent, But I have to live with the star and its distance and volunteer myself for this daily emotional sacrilege! But then, living loving someone is a beautiful feeling, Maybe that is why daisies bloom every year, To witness the kiss of the summer, that magical thing, And for its sake bearing the pain of winter, seems nothing, every year, and every next year!

In nature, nothing transforms without breaking first. Flowers can't bloom until they're deeply, wholly roots. Seasons can't turn until the cold has come and killed off the remnants of the past. Butterflies don't spread their wings before being cocooned up in isolation for weeks, and stars don't become supernovas before facing their own implosion.

When you have softness and precision at the same time, the lotus of awakened heart is blossoming within you. The lotus always blooms in the mud. You are willing to give birth to this beautiful lotus flower in the muddy waters of your life. For the first time, you realize that you are a candidate to be a wakeful person.

Tucking into the bite-sized pie decorated with the orange carrot flower, her eyes widened at how delicious the braised new onions and carrots were, the cumin perfectly drawing out their sweetness. The main dish of lamb, cut from the bone as soon as it was placed on the table, was so glorious to behold that it made her heart race. Protected by its wall of sweet breadcrumbs, orange peel and fresh coriander, the meat had the robust smell of a grassy plain. The strawberry mousse served as dessert, brought out after the hard rich orange cheese that reminded her of dried mullet roe, was fluffy and soft, sweet yet tart. For the first time this year, Rika felt that the season when all the flowers would come into bloom was at arm's reach.

Your first mistake was assuming a measly four-letter word could encapsulate the way I feel for her,” I say, tilting my head to the side, slicing Mersi with a stare I hope she feels all the way to her bones. “Your second was assuming I’ll ever let her go. Make a third and we’re done.

One day I asked the guide when flowers fall in Bali. He seemed puzzled by my question. … ‘The flowers fall when it rains. When the rain stops, they bloom again. So, always in bloom.’ I thought Jenny and I were just going through a rainy period. That flowers would bloom again, and that carefree days like the ones we had in Bali would be back again. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt everything would be okay again.

We break off into the streets, repairing the cobblestones with our brisk allegro. The townsfolk step aside in awe as my allongés stitch the pastel wood back into cottages and storefronts. Flowers grow from my quick bourrée steps, breathing life back into Luna Island in shades of pink and purple. Rainbows rise from the sea with my grand jeté, summoning the dolphins to leap alongside our dance. Damien catches me in his arms before lifting me into the air as I paint the sky bright blue. We laugh as the beauty of Luna Island blooms once again, running into the forest and turning the ash into lush green trees. Color bursts in the darkness as we chassé through the angels' village and past the glade where our story first began. With my pirouettes, I add extra pink petals to the garden where Damien and I once lay. I break into a series of chaîné turns as we make our way back down to the beach, unleashing the magic Luna bestowed upon me. The townsfolk watch in awe in the midst of the commotion, and I dust them in a veil of starlight that follows my path, healing bruises and stitching wounds until no one bleeds. They gather around me as I finish my dance, thrumming with applause and tossing the freshly spun flowers at my feet.

I love you with all your madness I love you with all your intellect I love you with all your troubles I love you with all your genius I love you with all your anger I love you with all your tenderness I love you with all your insecurities I love you with all your confidence I love you with all your dreams I love you with all your hopes I love you with all your tears I love you with all your laughter I love you with all your history I love you with all your future I love you with all my being I love you as I love the stars at night I love you as the sunrise I love you as the first flowers of spring bloom I love you as the morning dew whispers to the fields and forests I love you

Sugar had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina: possibly the most luscious of the world's garden cities. Behind every wrought-iron gate or exposed-brick wall in the picturesque peninsula blooming between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers lay a sweet-scented treasure trove of camellias, roses, gardenias, magnolias, tea olives, azaleas and jasmine, everywhere, jasmine. With its lush greenery, opulent vines, sumptuous hedgerows and candy-colored window boxes, it was no wonder the city's native sons and daughters believed it to be the most beautiful place on earth. In her first years of exile Sugar had tried to cultivate a reminder of the luxuriant garden delights she had left behind, struggling in sometimes hostile elements to train reluctant honeysuckle and sulky sweet potato vines or nurture creeping jenny and autumn stonecrop.

I sat down on the end of the bed and breathed a relaxed sigh, soaking up the room’s ambience. There was a slight, sweet scent in the air, as though flowers bloomed in the shadows unseen. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but there was a small black box sitting on a nearby table top. I climbed up off the bed and walked over to where it waited. It was a black cardboard gift box about two hand-spans across with a black satin ribbon tied around it. Whoever had left it obviously liked the colour black; possibly Prince Eldran.

It's ironic that some plants thrive in soil that has been displaced. Due to the devastation around us, these flowers bloom profusely, yet I find their tenacity and beauty uplifting.

Kane picked up the vase and brought the flowers to his nose, breathing them in. Most people said calla lilies had no fragrance. He always disagreed, picking up the faintest of clean, sweet, floral scents. Pain slashed again across his heart as he recalled sending a similar bouquet to Avery after his first dinner at La Bella Luna. The tears started to roll down his cheeks as he looked closer at the blooms. There was no way whoever sent them could have known this arrangement was his favorite or that it had been the one he'd chosen to use when he'd apologized to Avery all those years ago. The pain of Avery's loss rolled through him again, becoming too much. He closed the front door behind him and set the flowers on the nearest end table, grabbing a tissue from the box beside them. It was then he noticed a notecard hidden among the flowers, having missed it amid the beautiful blooms.

cautiously. “Mark Rothko? Is that when he got Alizée’s paintings from Eleanor Roosevelt?” “He gets the painting from the other one.” I sat up, senses heightened. “What other one?” “She gives him the one he carries with him all the time.” “Is it big?” I asked. “Red, white, and blue? Or does it look like lily pads?” “Bloom. That is where we go first. We are worried she is . . .” Grand-mère made a circular motion with her forefinger. “She is not all there in the head.” “The painting looks like blooms? Like flowers?” Lily Pads could be interpreted that way. “Did you go with him to visit Eleanor Roosevelt?

Western political experts often suffer from electoral fundamentalism, in the same way macroeconomists from the IMF and the World Bank not so long ago suffered collectively from market fundamentalism: they believe that meeting the formal requirements of a system is enough to let a thousand flowers bloom in even the most barren desert. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, however, has clearly showed that “sequencing” and “pacing” are essential to the introduction of a market economy.28 One does not start cultivating the desert by first sowing the best of seed. The same goes for introducing a democracy.

It was on the morning of the first day at my school after the long summer break this year that I noticed something stunning as I was about to enter my school through the rock garden gate. As usual, I was so much eager to have a first glimpse of my favourite red brick house from a distance, but instead something even redder captured my eyes. It was an elegant tree full bloomed with red coloured flowers in the morning sun waiting to welcome me back to school after the break, which immediately lifted little remaining home sickness. The guard uncle told that the majestic tree is called Krishnachura. Again I was awed by the beauty of the name. I have seen this tree a plenty in my locality at Salt Lake, but they never ever drew my attention the way this tree did at the school gate at the backdrop of the red building that summer morning. After returning home, I immediately searched for more details of the Krishnachura and found that the tree originally belongs to the islands of the Madagascar. In other parts of India, this tree is known as the Gulmohar. They are also fondly called “Flames of forest”, which somebody rightly resembled them to the flames of the bushfires in hot dry summer. I also found that in many countries, e.g. in Japan, every school must plant at least few flowering cherry trees in their premises. These cherry blossoms have influenced the Japanese society and its art and culture tremendously. Similarly, the Krishnachura has also influenced many poets and appears in the Indian literature and music. However, in our country, they are not mandatorily planted in our school. I am so fortunate to have these trees in my school. I again realized the visions of the founders and subsequent nurturers of my school. I have been seeing this tree since my nursery days, but probably, I was too little to be conscious about its beauty. I told about this to my father, but he further astonished me when he told me that even he looks forward every year for the blossom. Probably, me too will be waiting every year henceforth for the Krishnachura to bloom, but the trail of the sight of the tree of my school that very morning of June with remain with me forever.

Tea chests full of the rotting correspondence of the parents Busner had never know, their serrated postcards, their now blotched but once creamy notepaper folded into thick envelopes that had been extravagantly franked and stamped. All of it he had foreseen himself unpacking, unsheathing and unfolding, so that the pressed flowers bloomed into dust as he read the missives for the first time since their long-gone recipients set the sheets to one side.

Scarlet! It is the first color I have seen in months. Or so it seems. Scarlet. A little wild poppy, of a red so sudden it made my blood stop. I kept saying the word over and over to myself, scarlet, as if the word, like the color, had escaped me till now, and just saying it would keep the little windblown flower in sight. Poppy. The magic of saying the word made my skin prickle, the saying almost a greater miracle than the seeing. I was drunk with joy. I danced. I shouted. Imagine the astonishment of my friends at Rome to see our cynical metropolitan poet, who barely knows a flower or a tree, dancing about in broken sandals on the earth, which is baked hard and cracked in some places, and in others puddled with foul-smelling mud- to see him dancing and singing to himself in celebration of this bloom. Poppy, scarlet poppy, flower of my far-off childhood and the cornfields round our farm at Sulmo, I have brought you into being again, I have raised you out of my earliest memories, out of my blood, to set you blowing in the wind. Scarlet. Magic word on the tongue to flash again on the eye. Scarlet.

Oh, no,” Kirihime whispered in horror. A naked Camellia running around the base was not something she wanted to deal with. This is not good! Kirihime burst out the door. She didn’t even bother locking up and just ran down the hall, using the enhancement technique to run faster. “Lady Camellia!” She turned a corner and was just in time to see Camellia standing inside of an elevator, the doors slowly sliding shut. “Bye, bye, Kiri-Kiri!” Camellia waved at Kirihime, who rushed for the door. However, not even the enhancement technique gave her enough speed to reach her mistress before the doors shut. Kirihime slammed into the door, then fell onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. “This… this is really not good. Not good at all.” *** Kevin, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt that conformed to his torso, exited the locker room and began the long walk back to his apartment. His muscles ached from his most recent exercises. He and Kiara had been trying to discover more about his power. They had learned a lot through experimentation. It seemed his strange ability only worked on barriers, but they didn’t work on anything else, which he’d learned the hard way after suffering several full-on youki attacks from the powerful inu. Still, this power is pretty useful, even if it’s just the ability to break barriers. Kevin looked at his left hand. This hand seemed to be where this strange power was contained. He’d tried breaking through Kiara’s barrier with his right hand but had only received severe burns for his troubles. I wonder if it only works on barriers? Can I use it for anything else? Kiara had described his unique skill as the “ability to unlock barriers,” and indeed, when watching his power at work, it did look more like unlocking than destroying. When he touched Kiara’s aura, the red energy would peel apart like a blooming flower. The energy didn’t dissipate either. It still existed, but it moved around his hand, meaning that he wasn’t destroying it, just moving it out of the way. Kiara’s aura isn’t a barrier either, not really. It stands to reason this power can work on more than just barriers. “Kkkkkeeeeeevvvvviiiinnnnnn…………….” Kevin stopped walking, his head tilting in idle curiosity as he heard someone calling his name. “Kkkkkkyyyyyuuuuuunnnnnnnn!!!!” His eyes widening, Kevin swiftly spun around as the source of the voice got louder. He promptly found two large, round, soft things being shoved into his face. “Uwa!!” He tumbled to the floor, taking the other person with him. Delightful, childish laughter told him exactly who had crashed into him tits first. Kevin felt almost resigned. Why do these things keep happening to me?

Deep meditation means emptiness, nothingness, a state of utter silence, where not even the idea of "I" exists. One is, but with no idea of "I". It is a state of egolessness. Deva Emanuel said after a satsang that when I tolled the Tibetan bells for the second time at the end of the satsang, he suddenly came back from the deep silence, where there is no "I". There are three things that happens out of the silence and emptiness: prayer, grace and compassion. The first flower is prayer, which is not of words, but of silent gratitude. One has to be absolutely silent, but there is gratitude because it is to experience the splendor of life. Thousand and one flowers bloom within you, and suddenly the spring has come.  The silence and emptiness is overflowing with fragrance. The moment you drop the "I", the beyond descends into you. You create a silence and  a vacuum, and immediately the beyond fills it.  The second flower is grace, because when you are silent, prayerful and thankful, a subtlegrace surrounds you. Grace means that the beyond has touched you. God has touchedyou. This very touch is transforming, and you are no longer ordinary. You become silent and extraordinary when you drop the ego. And by dropping the ego, you become touched by God. That is what grace is.  The third flower is compassion. When you are silent and prayerful that is your inner experience. That prayerfulness will radiate from your body, your words,your actions and the way you are silent. And all your actions will come out of compassion. Passions are unconscious, compassion is conscious. You act, but your actions are totally different. Now they come out of love. When there is silence, prayer and compassion, you have come home. 

The room where she now stayed faced out on to a garden that was yellowed with the parched desolation of winter. The dried and leafless stalks of flowers that had bloomed in the summer stood black against the world that did not want them any more, and of whose existence they had forgotten long ago, after the last flowers had faded. Hannah Theron felt at home with these tattered stalks. Her life hung in the same sort of tatters. Only she still tried to cover herself with the rags. That was where she felt that the winter-tarnished stalks standing in a hard bitterness in a garden that did not want them any more were stronger than she was. They were defiant and they did not care, and they had shed all their pretences. They would be pulled up before the spring rains and the first sowings. They did not look forward to any future summer. In the cold wind shaking their brittleness they had no dreams of a slow life sap stirring, flowing, beating. If only she could lose this useless emotion, this wan thing that was not a hope and that had in it no element of caressingness, then she could at least stand on level terms with those things that did not regret the passing of their coloured times.

This analogy is going to seem out of left field, but bear with me. My husband, Jon, and I have a peace lily plant that we bought when we first moved into our home. It was always in the front room. It got frequent care and adequate water, but it never bloomed. The foliage was green and beautiful, but the plant remained the same. It didn’t die, but it didn’t grow, either. It just existed. Then one day I thought to bring it into the kitchen and put it in the bay window with our fresh herbs. Within less than a week, I noticed the first signs of a tightly wrapped white flower bud waiting to bloom. A couple of days later, up popped another bud. Who would have thought that all that plant needed was a little more light to thrive? It instantly struck me that there was a beautiful analogy for my own life here. This peace lily had everything it needed to survive, but it didn’t have the missing piece that it needed to thrive. I couldn’t help but think of all the times in my life when I had given myself only the bare minimum that I needed to survive and offered myself none of the things that I needed to thrive.

It's called a Horologium Florae," Martha explained later that afternoon. She'd dug a large circle in the grass. The circle was sectioned off into twelve wedges. "A flower clock. It was first hypothesized by a Swedish botanist in the 1700s. You plant a dozen flowers, each of them programmed to open and close at a specific hour. At the one o'clock section you plant a flower whose blooms open at one. At the two o'clock section you plant a flower whose blooms open at two. The blooms tell you what time it is. Like a sundial, only with flowers. Of course, I'll have to wait until summer to plant, but I wanted to mark out the space before the first frost." She pointed at each section in turn: "Goatsbeard there, then morning glory, then hawkweed, then purple poppy mallow. Then, I'm sorry to say, I'll have to use lettuce- there's nothing else that will bloom at that hour. On to swamp rose mallow and marsh sowthistle. Then flameflower and hawkbit.

It is so refreshing... The non transactional nature of true love... Much like the scent from the first bloomed flower at the onset of spring.

It means you are the most beautiful creature that has ever walked the earth. When I look at you, I see mountain peaks and flowers blooming for the first time. You are the stream running through the trees and the breeze rustling the leaves. You could never be reduced to words such as pretty or cruel or kind. All the languages in the world could never find a term to do you justice, much less a throwaway compliment.

There was a dress we always kept in the family---a little girl's dress that once belonged to my great-grandmother. Ashley." Millie hesitated, as though to emphasize the name. "Ashley was just a child when she was sold, and her mother sewed the dress and embroidered a rose like that one on it." "Kind of reminds me of the color of that huge rosebush at Eliza's old estate in Charleston," Sullivan said, and Peter agreed. "I mean, I know it's comparing a real bush to an embroidered one... but isn't it strange. Eliza would have a bush with that color rose in her yards both here and in Charleston, and a collection of needlework displays with it in her attic?" Alice shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Roses are very popular flowers and were especially popular during that time period. It certainly could mean something, but I'm more interested in the sequence of the flowers this person chose to embroider and the connection Millie mentioned to that dress." Alice leaned closer. "Millie, are you sure the stitching is the same?" As a renowned seamstress, Millie's eye could be trusted. Millie nodded emphatically. "I have no doubt about it," she said. "The gentle curve of the petals. Shows remarkable craftsmanship. I remember admiring it when I was a little girl myself. It's one of the first memories I have of falling in love with textiles.

After her unexpected breakfast with Sullivan this morning, Alice clipped stems for a petite arrangement of carnations and crimson-tipped roses, with a few sprays of purple wildflowers thrown in for good measure. She breathed in deeply, and the fragrance brought back the magic of the first Valentine's flowers she received from a crush back in high school. It was one of the many things she loved about flowers---their ability to pull you out of the present and into the past, then back into the present once more, better for having remembered something so lovely.

On either side of the laneway, rain-soaked bushes burst into a flurry of white flowers. Alice's first breaths were filled with lightning and the scent of storm lilies in bloom. You were the true love I needed to wake me from a curse, Bun, her mother would say to finish the story. You're my fairytale.

The rear doors of the Marble Hall open onto the sprawling Fountain Terrace, decorated with statues and topiary. A promenade curves southward from it, lined with yew trees that resemble giant gumdrops, and banks of daffodils and bluebells. Multiple gated gardens snake outward from the grassy lane. "This is the first of the gardens that we allow visitors to tour," Max says, leading me through a gate with a plaque above it reading THE FRENCH GARDEN. "We just planted new pink roses for the summer season." "They're beautiful." I can feel Max watching me intently as I wander the perimeter, taking in the blooming flowers and lush orange trees.

Dear reader, I guess there’s a chance – just the tiniest chance – that I might hunt you down. Beforehand I’d always let such a frivolous impulse fade but these days – and I am not proud of this – the pictures lurking in the corners of my mind are gaining in colour, detail and intensity. I fight them, I really do, but the scenario seems to have a life of its own, slowly taking shape and maybe dreaming of the day it gets unleashed into the real world. Becomes flesh and blood, if you like. And despite my very best efforts at restraint, I’m afraid I’ve already started... planning. You know, plotting a bit. Gathering details about your movements and habits. That sort of thing. And if I’m pushed, I might admit to lingering on the finer points of your demise, perhaps even gorging on the sight of your stricken face as I finally take centre stage in your life. You see, I guess I’m just tired of your lack of appreciation. Let’s face it, I’m not exactly the first name on your Christmas card list. I’m still waiting for you to swing by for a cuppa and a few kind words. Hey, a simple email would have been enough. Don’t you know how precious a bit of encouragement can be? And here’s the rub: for as long as I can remember I have been on my knees in front of you only to be treated like the invisible man. You’ve repeatedly ignored my imploring face and open arms, although occasionally you’ve stopped and dallied, causing my heart to skitter wildly. I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to be noticed. It’s so... nourishing. After all, a flower can’t bloom in the dark. But then it dawns on me that you’re not committed to our fledgling relationship. In fact, it’s just a flirtation and soon you’ll be skipping on your merry way. Whatever trifling affection you have shown, it’s clear you’ll never bang the drum for little old me. And don’t think I don’t know about the others. The ones you fawn over. Just tell me – why are you so in thrall with their rampant mediocrity? Hell, maybe they’ve somehow infected you, skewed your take on things and made you unable to sort the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps I should offer condolences but the fact remains that kneeling before you with my heart in my hands only seems to result in you jumping into bed with them. Do you not understand how much love I’ve lavished on you? Call me tetchy, but some days you simply seem unworthy of my great sacrifice. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All is not lost. For here we are again meeting as equals and this time I know I have your attention. I can only hope you have lost the desire to bait me, or God forbid, spit in my face. So help me. Accept my tender embrace. Or one day, dear reader, you might find the invisible man taking shape right in front of your disbelieving eyes. And you’d only have yourself to blame.

The first so beautiful that when fish see her reflection they forget how to swim and sink. The second so beautiful that birds forget how to fly and fall. The third so beautiful that the moon refuses to shine. The fourth so beautiful that flowers refuse to bloom. I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse. This proverb is said and re-said on the day of my parents’ wedding.

When you first step from your comfort bubble into a new environment, all the sensory details are acutely apparent: the guttural sound of the toads, what locals call the Ouaouarons (pronounced “wa-wa-rons”), the crooning of some foreign night bird deep in a jungle of pine, palmetto, and cypress, the sweet scent of night-blooming flowers mixing with the loamy, earthen banks of the bayou, Spanish Moss draped like early Halloween decorations on the sagging arms of tree-giants, and the feel of thick, wet air filling your head and chest.

A Hyacinth, The pale purple colored Flower bloomed. It was the first day She shaked my heart.

Springtime in Turkey and the South Caucasus is idealized for good reason. Valleys are carpeted with wildflowers and the land is one of bewildering variety. Apricot trees start frothing white blossoms, soft green buds begin appearing on willow branches and the quince orchards turn pink with flowers. And as soon as herbs come to life, imbued with the spirit of the green blooming hillsides, they are greeted and rallied to the table. Dill and parsley fill freshly griddled flatbreads--- qutabs in Azerbaijan, jingalov hats in Armenia, gözleme in Turkey--- often elevated by little more than a generous brushing of first-rate butter. In Georgia, coriander soup, thickened with potato, is served with dark rye bread. In Turkey, fresh mint is mixed freely with cucumbers, yoghurt and water, or with pureed broad beans. In Turkish, I am told, there is even a verb used for chopping herbs, kıymak.

Garden of Memories As night turns into morn, grief grows a garden, whose roots go deep, in the soil of soul. From the mess of tears, the pile of ashes, Unkempt weeds grow into flowers. The sheltering shade, a solitude of fullness, In it, is the alive aloneness. The soul that wilted, sadly in silence, Slowly sees the first signs of spring. The budless boughs are bare no more, For spring outshone the wintry winds of grief. The gloom of ages has turned into bloom, A blossom, perennial, for memories are eternal. Something breaks, but something sprouts, For the lonesome heart has become a flower. "All I Ever Wanted to Say"...Excerpt Jayita Bhattacharjee

Garden of Memories As night turns to morn, grief grows a garden, whose roots go deep, in the soil of soul. From the mess of tears, the pile of ashes, Unkempt weeds grow into flowers. The sheltering shade, a solitude of fullness, In it, is the alive aloneness. The soul that wilted, sadly in silence, Slowly sees the first signs of spring. The budless boughs are bare no more, For spring outshone the wintry winds of grief. The gloom of ages has turned into bloom, A blossom, perennial, for memories are eternal. Something breaks, but something sprouts, For the lonesome heart has become a flower.

Be still,” he ordered. Almost gently, he turned her palm so that it was lit by firelight. “Please,” she whimpered. “I don’t—” He raised his eyes and gazed into hers. “I do not hate you, Becca,” he said. “I mean you no harm. So long as my father lives, you are safe with me.” He clasped her hand with his lean, brown fingers. “There is something I do not understand,” he continued softly. “Your flesh is no different from mine.” She shuddered with terror as he pulled his knife from his sheath and sliced the skin on the back of his hand. A thin trickle of blood ran down over her palm. “Do you see?” he asked. “Do you see that my blood is the color of yours? I am a man. I thirst and hunger; my heart is glad when the first flowers bloom through March snow, and I know sorrow when those I love come to grief. Am I so different from an Englishman—an Irishman—a Frenchman? Am I?” She shook her head.

So what's your middle name, Lily Bloom?" I groan, which makes him perk up. "You mean it gets worse?" I drop my head in my hands and nod. "Rose?" I shake my head. "Worse." "Violet?" "I wish." I cringe and then mutter, "Blossom." There's a moment of silence. "Goddamn," he says softly. Yeah. Blossom is my mother's maiden name and my parents thought it was fate that their last names were synonyms. So of course when they had me, a flower was their first choice." "Your parents must be real assholes.

Remedio : Ocotillo (Candlewood) To forgive one’s life love for dying, pick the long, feather-like, crimson flowers in early spring, when the desert is in bloom. Boil in river water only. Let cool. Drink at once. Drink when waking, at noon, and at bedtime each day for three full weeks thereafter. If resentment persists, go to your beloved’s grave daily and pray for forgiveness until sound sleep and appetite return. ◊◊◊ My last days May they pass slow as black smoke goes father’s only prayer of late No No I’m certain that he stole it from Adam I’m sure who first uttered it just outside the Garden the first night he spent alone

Inside was a miniature incandescent, one of the genetically engineered flowers that attracted light the way magnets attract metal. Already it was drawing some of the light from the room toward it, taking on a sort of ghostly glow, though it generated none of the light itself. Incandescents were funny; they’d become much cheaper since they were first bred decades ago, because they only lasted a few hours before dying. But they were truly beautiful if you caught them in the one night they bloomed.

Oh, Matthew," she whispered, moved to tears. "I called it Grace. I hope you don't mind." For the first time, his manner held a hint of shyness, disconcerting in a man who had just made love to her without hesitation or reticence. Gently, she curled her hand around what was inside the box and lifted it to the light. "It's your rose." "No, it's your rose." A heady fragrance filled the air. With one shaking finger, Grace touched a flawless pink petal. The color was unforgettable. It was the most beautiful rose she'd ever seen. Impossible to credit that those unpromising stalks in his courtyard had produced this exquisite bloom. "It's perfect," she whispered. "It's a miracle." He was a miracle. How could she not love the man who conjured this beauty with hands and imagination? The faint smile broadened. Had he worried that she'd reject his gift? Foolish, darling Matthew. The question was whether the rose was a promise of a future or a token of parting. "I worked on it whenever I could. This last year has been busy." An understatement, she knew. The Marquess of Sheene had been a ubiquitous presence in London since his release. Everywhere he went, society feted him as a hero. She'd read of the string of honors he'd received, the friendship with the king, the invitations to join scientific boards and societies. Echoing her gesture, he reached out to touch the petals. The sensitivity of his fingers on the flower reminded her of his hands on her skin. "I did most of the basic experiments when I was a prisoner, but I couldn't get it right." He glanced up with an expression that combined pride and diffidence in a breathtakingly attractive mixture. "This is the first bud, Grace. It appeared almost a year to the day after I promised to wait. It seemed a sign." "And you brought it to me," she said softly, staring at the flower. The anniversary of his release didn't occur for two more days. That date was etched on her longing heart. Then she noticed something else. "My glove," she said blankly. With unsteady hands, she reached in and withdrew a light green kidskin glove from a recess carved away from the damp. The buttery leather was crushed and worn from incessant handling. "Have you kept it all this time?" "Of course." He wasn't smiling anymore and his eyes deepened to a rich, rare gold. Beautiful, unwavering, somber. "You make me want to cry." Her voice emerged so thickly, she didn't sound like herself. She laid the box on the bench and tightened her grip on the soft leather until her knuckles whitened. What was he trying to tell her? What did the rose mean? The glove? Had he carried her glove into his new life like a knight wore his lady's favor into battle? The thought sent choking emotion to her throat.

Next comes chawan mushi, a delicate egg custard studded with wild mountain vegetables and surrounded by flowers from the bamboo forest. A dish as old as Kyoto itself. Toshio plucks two sacs of cod milt from the grill, slides them off the skewer into a squat clay box filled with bubbling miso. He comes back a second later with a scoop of konawata, pickled sea cucumber organs. A dish as new as the spring flowers blooming just outside the window. One by one, the market stars reappear on the plate. A black-and-gold lacquered bowl: Toshio pulls off the top to reveal thin slices of three-year-old virgin wild boar braised into sweet, savory submission with Kyoto white miso and chunks of root vegetables. Uni- Hokkaido and Kansai- the first atop a wedge of taro root dusted with rice flour and lightly fried, the other resting gently on a fried shiso leaf. Two bites, two urchins, an echo of the lesson in the market this morning.

Nothing in the garden gives so much pleasure as the early spring flowers. Perhaps this is because they are the first to bloom. Every one knows how beautiful the first lovely Dandelion seems, gold-starring the new grass.

This Mlle Varenka was not really past her first youth, but was, as it were, a being without youth: she might have been nineteen, she might have been thirty. If one studied her features, she was more beautiful than plain, despite her sickly complexion. She would also have been of good build, if it had not been for the excessive leanness of her body and a head much too large for her medium height; but she must not have been attractive to men. She was like a beautiful flower which, while still full of petals, is scentless and no longer blooming. Besides that, she also could not be attractive to men because she lacked what Kitty had in over-abundance - the restrained fire of life and an awareness of her attractiveness.

To Morton Stone, all those first weeks at Meerlust had a strange, dream-like quality. The contours and smells of the country, the odd style of the house’s architecture, the stinkwood furniture and ancient brass with which its rooms were furnished, had an exotic flavour that left him slightly bewildered. They didn’t, naturally, bewilder Catherine at all. She was rapturously recapturing the days when she and Hans had been children together. To Morton there was something beautiful, and at the same time pathetic, in the quickness with which she responded to each remembered detail: the bird-song, the flowers that now bloomed in incredible profusion, the smell of the veld, the soft accents of Cape-Dutch dialect. It was pathetic for two reasons. First because these memories, which he could neither share nor understand, increased the distance between them; once again, because all her rapture was shadowed for him by the gloom of an in- definite apprehensiveness. This very excess of happiness took it out of her. She wasn’t, as he could see, and as the Malans’ Dutch doctor told him, any better for the change. It seemed to spur her to a morbid restlessness. She was catching at every memory, within, or just out of reach, as though some inward consciousness told her that the time for its enjoyment was limited. It irked her to find him, as it seemed to her, dull and unresponsive. As for Morton, the sense of impending disaster never left him. He could have faced it more easily, he felt, at home, amid familiar surroundings, than in this strange, unreal oasis of beauty, five thousand miles from anywhere.

To first determine what it is I want to say and then try to find the best way not to say it requires quite a bit of effort, Mr. Trimble. I find it dreadfully inefficient.

Experience the Valley of Flowers Trek 2025 with Trek The Himalayas Embark on a breathtaking journey through the Valley of Flowers, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. Known for its lush meadows, vibrant wildflowers, and spiritual energy, the Valley of Flowers Trek in 2025 is perfect for nature lovers, adventure seekers, and photography enthusiasts. What is the Valley of Flowers? The Valley of Flowers National Park lies within the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, covering 87.5 sq km. This alpine valley is home to: Over 500 species of blooming wildflowers Endangered plants and animals Majestic Himalayan landscapes and peaceful trekking trails During the monsoon, the Valley of Flowers transforms into a colorful paradise that attracts trekkers from across the globe. Valley of Flowers Trek 2025 – Quick Overview Trek Duration: 6 Days Trek Difficulty: Easy to Moderate Max Altitude: 14,100 ft (4,300 m) Best Time: June to September 2025 Starting Point: Govindghat, Uttarakhand Ending Point: Rishikesh, Uttarakhand Stay Options: Campsites & guesthouses Guides: Certified and experienced leaders Best Time to Visit Valley of Flowers in 2025 The best time to visit the Valley of Flowers is from June to September, when the blooms are at their peak. The official opening date is 1st June 2025, and the valley remains accessible until 4th October 2025 (subject to Forest Department updates). Things to Carry for Valley of Flowers Trek Be well-prepared for your Valley of Flowers trekking experience with: Clothing: Lightweight, breathable clothes; warm layers for evenings Shoes: Trekking boots with strong grip Gear: Rain poncho, trekking poles, sun hat, sunglasses Health Items: Medications, first aid kit, water purifying tablets ID & Permits: Valid photo ID and necessary trekking permits Day-wise Valley of Flowers Trek Itinerary Day 1: Drive from Rishikesh to Pipalkoti Day 2: Drive to Govindghat – Pulna, trek to Ghangaria Day 3: Trek to Valley of Flowers, return to Ghangaria Day 4: Visit Hemkund Sahib, return to Ghangaria Day 5: Trek to Govindghat, drive to Pipalkoti (Badrinath optional) Day 6: Drive back to Rishikesh Accommodation During the Valley of Flowers Trek Stay in clean and comfortable guesthouses and campsites along the trail. Ghangaria offers basic amenities like hot meals and bedding. Advance booking is highly recommended in the peak Valley of Flowers trekking season. Valley of Flowers Trek Cost – 2025 The cost of Valley of Flowers trek with Trek The Himalayas ranges between ₹12,000 to ₹14,000 per person. Prices vary based on batch size, inclusions (transport, meals, permits, and stay), and time of booking. For updated pricing, visit the official site: Trek The Himalayas Why Choose Trek The Himalayas? Expert high-altitude trek leaders Focus on safety with updated health protocols Eco-conscious and responsible trekking Hassle-free, all-inclusive packages Nearby Attractions Around Valley of Flowers Hemkund Sahib: Sacred Sikh pilgrimage at 14,100 ft Nanda Devi National Park: Known for rare Himalayan biodiversity Ghangaria Village: Base camp for both Hemkund Sahib and Valley of Flowers trek Valley of Flowers Trek 2025 FAQs Q: When does the Valley of Flowers open in 2025? A: It opens on 1st June 2025 and closes on 4th October 2025, subject to government approval. Q: Is the Valley of Flowers trek difficult? A: It’s a beginner-friendly trek rated as easy to moderate, with a gradual incline and well-marked trail. Book Your Valley of Flowers Trek 2025 Today! Experience the magic of one of India’s most scenic trekking destinations. Walk through meadows of wildflowers, witness towering peaks, and soak in Himalayan peace. Visit official webiste of Trek The Himalayas for more information.

Even the most stubborn flowers bloom. He was the first one you loved, you offered him your heart and now it has gone cold. But I offer you mine in its stead. I will wait for you, however long it takes.

Delilah is pretty. Quietly pretty. She will never be the first person everyone looks at when entering a room. Especially not in L.A., where beautiful women bloom like flowers in a well-tended garden. But among a bouquet of perfect roses, Delilah is much like her namesake flower--- unexpectedly vivid and complex--- making you realize that roses are boring in comparison.

Roxannah knelt to rinse her hands in the clear waters of a shallow, rectangular pool. She grew aware of the perfume of hundreds of blooming roses and, turning, noticed for the first time the profusion of colors that surrounded her--- soft pink, buttery yellow, rich cream, pearly white--- dotting the roomy courtyard and climbing from a half dozen arbors. The physician had turned his home into a tiny paradise of calm and color.

I was my most attractive the year I turned forty. A woman that age is a rose in full bloom with all her layers unfurled and the once-hidden folds within her shamelessly on display. For the first time, she is nourished enough to stretch out, open, expand... A woman of forty is a flower fully unfurled. It's also the instant before she starts to wilt.

Hatred and love are flowers which bloom from the same seed. You cannot hate something without first loving it—even if merely the idea. If you were indifferent, you couldn’t be driven to hatred—to rage

By the time he planted his first seed and watched it bloom into a bright white daisy, Hart began to feel what he suspected his mom felt every time she was out in the gardens. The joy sprouted on the stem, and in his soul. While other boys were becoming interested in video games, or sports, or breaking rules, Hart got really into flowers. There were some areas in the garden where the flowers grew so high and bountiful that you could walk through them and get lost in tiny worlds. Whole colorful planets at his fingertips. To Hart, there was nothing like it. Cupping a sorbet-colored ball of dahlia in the palm of his hand, breathing in the musky-sweet notes of jasmine, watching the pollen-dressed bees buzzing in the fluff. The flowers made something in Hart's soul stir. Or settle. Or float. He wasn't sure what, but it felt like he'd discovered a secret that no one else knew about. That all you needed to feel perfectly in balance with the world were flowers.

Socialism and life-affirmation are not fantasies or ideals that we dream up or pluck from the sky to then impose onto the world. Rather, they are real immanent historical possibilities, made possible, and even necessary, by already-existing conditions. The tendencies which move towards socialism and life-affirmation already exist, just as the tendency towards the blooming of a flower already existing in its seed, and there is not a day on Earth that individuals do not struggle to extend them. At the same time, there is nothing inevitable about such development, as countertendencies always threaten to crush the seed before it grows. All we need is to kindle the tendencies of affirmation, to further them, and unleash their unfolding until they realize their most joyful potential. I end on this note to emphasize that, strictly speaking, this work of philosophy does not end on the book's final pages. If it ends at all, it will end beyond all books, where the philosophical problems brought up here are tackled at their source: the social relations that produce and maintain them.

There are some knights who require the comfort of a woman after such vicious fighting. Ahrensbach’s first wife informed us that Schlaftraum’s flowers were blooming wonderfully that year, then took us to a private location. As the knights chose their women, Lord Raublut pointed to a vase filled with white flowers.

Andrew could feel Thomas’s fear, the exhaustion—but also his loss. First his art, now the woods. They used to belong to Thomas. This was the place where he roared and grew taller, where his smile could make flowers bloom and his energy could flow endless and untamed. Monsters had eaten that out of him. The trick would be to stop them before there was nothing left of Thomas to save.

This is evening primrose, and from my elbow it changes into two plants, tuberose and moonflowers. My parents own a flower farm, back home in Georgia. Night blooms were my mama's specialty. Some of my favorite memories were with her in the greenhouse after sunset, watching the flowers bloom. The tattoos, they're my way of staying close to her, now she's gone." "I'm sorry, love." He watched as Rosemary blinked back tears. "It was a long time ago, it's okay." Ellis thought briefly of Hank, and even though he knew losing a pet wasn't the same as losing a parent, the grief of that often surprised him at the most unlikely of times. "It can still hurt," was all he managed to say.

The garden stretches out before us, every leaf a promise, every flower a quiet rebellion. I remember when we planted the first seed, its smallness fragile like hope. Now, the tomatoes hang heavy, bright with the fullness of summer, and I wonder if we’re not so different from them. How many seasons of patience did we need. How many days did we water the soil with regret until love finally bloomed.

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The dried pink petals tucked within had long since lost their sweet perfume. But the memories attached to them still evoked the enchanting scent of a perfect damask rose. It had been the first flower Jadon had given her. After that day, he had brought her other blooms: irises, jasmine, roses. Armfuls of flowers. But none ever charmed her as that first single rose, which he presented to her shyly, his young face flushed and earnest.

as I gazed upon the first bramble, I thought of how the world reinvents itself year after year, century after century, summer deepening always into autumn, winter brightening always into spring, growing new flowers from old roots, and I thought of how it feels to hold you, each season of you, our love blossoming afresh, year after year, century after century, new flowers from old roots, an eternal seed from which life will always bloom

ten-year-old had been the unexpected jewel of a loveless marriage, the raison d’être of the then-young man’s life and the inspiration for all he hoped to do in the world. From rocky soil in which opposites had first been attracted and then repelled into cold civility, this flower of promise had bloomed. She dethroned all of Theo’s previous deities the day she was born.