Perennial Flower Quotes

There is a beginning, middle and end to every woman's life. But once a woman arrives at what she thinks might be her end, all she must do is reach deep down into her innermost depths and there she will find a new beginning. A woman is hardy as a perennial flower and deep as the sea." --Whisper from the Ocean

You think God created us to be born only to grow and then die? Not even the tiniest perennial grows only to die. It comes back again and again when the season and the time is right. Even annual flowers grow seeds as they grow so that they can drop the seeds of themselves and live again year after year, life after life.

The tinker in his burial tree was a wonder to the birds. The vultures that came by day to nose with their hooked beaks among his buttons and pockets like outrageous pets soon left him naked of his rags and flesh alike. Black mandrake sprang beneath the tree as it will where the seed of the hanged falls and in spring a new branch pierced his breast and flowered in a green boutonnière perennial beneath his yellow grin. He took the sparse winter snows upon what thatch of hair still clung to his dried skull and hunters that passed that way never chanced to see him brooding among his barren limbs. Until wind had tolled the thinker's bones and seasons loosed them one by one to the ground below and his bleached and weathered brisket hung in that lonesome wood like a bone birdcage.

Blue pincushion Meaning: I mourn your absence Brunonia australis | All states and territories A perennial found in woodlands, open forests and sand plains. Medium to deep blue flowers usually in spring, in hemispherical clusters on a tall stem. Can be difficult to establish. May die after a few years.

It has been said that all the stories have already been told, that there is nothing left to say. At best, a writer’s job is to pour new wine in old bottles, to retell in a new way the same emotional predicaments that humans have felt since the beginnings of time. Yet many authors find this a worthwhile challenge; they think of themselves as gardeners whose task is to cultivate perennial ideas generation after generation. The same flowers will bloom each spring, but if the gardener slacks off, weeds will take over.

The music we are singing has been sung by hundreds of years by boys. I wonder if God expects to hear it rising off the Earth, like the bloom of a perennial flower. Or if it is a standing challenge, for us to come together and sing for him. Eric tells us in the old days of the castrati, elite Italian choristers who gelded themselves to keep their high clear voices. Some boys hold their crotches when that story is told, but I understand. I could want it that badly, to keep a voice.

Each generation is built upon the genetic ruins of the past. That our lives are merely biological waypoints. We're not individual flowers, annuals that bloom and then die. We're perennials. A part of us comes back each new season, carrying a bit of the genus of the previous floret.

Vanilla lily Meaning: Ambassador of love Sowerbaea juncea | Eastern Australia Perennial with edible roots found in eucalyptus forests, woodlands, heaths, and sub-alpine meadows. Grass-like leaves have a strong scent of vanilla. Flowers are pink-lilac to white, papery, with sweet vanilla perfume. Resprouts after fire.

Marigold (Calendula)--- Herb of the Sun. Not a perennial. Apricot color like cosmos = rangy and tall, a weed. Calendula = composed. Loni's flower

Perennial Hats [10w] Her hat bloomed with flowers even in the off season.

River Lily Meaning: Love concealed Crinum pedunculatum | Eastern Australia Very large perennial usually found on the edge of forests, but also at the high-tide level close to mangroves. Fragrant, white slender star-shaped flowers. Seeds sometimes germinate while still attached to the parent plant. The sap has been used as a treatment for box jellyfish stings.

There is a plant called the ghost pipe, because it is ghostly white, almost blue. Were you to cut open this flower and study it, you'd find no chlorophyll inside. It can grow in the dark, under the cover of fallen leaves and undergrowth in forests, under soil. It doesn't need to photosynthesize, because it is a parasite. It uses fungal networks to suck energy from photosynthesizing trees. Its roots look like clusters of tiny fingers that grope toward and connect with huge white webs of fungus that in turn connect with the thick roots of trees.

Because this painting has never been restored there is a heightened poignance to it somehow; it doesn’t have the feeling of unassailable permanence that paintings in museums do. There is a small crack in the lower left, and a little of the priming between the wooden panel and the oil emulsions of paint has been bared. A bit of abrasion shows, at the rim of a bowl of berries, evidence of time’s power even over this—which, paradoxically, only seems to increase its poetry, its deep resonance. If you could see the notes of a cello, when the bow draws slowly and deeply across its strings, and those resonant reverberations which of all instruments’ are nearest to the sound of the human voice emerge—no, the wrong verb, they seem to come into being all at once, to surround us, suddenly, with presence—if that were made visible, that would be the poetry of Osias Beert. But the still life resides in absolute silence. Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something, or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read. Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a band of hikers will make themselves heard. But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails, the solid and dependable apples, this heap of rumpled books, this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver. These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur. The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen. Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over, like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does, as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so, and things fall into being, tumble through the progression of existing in time. Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life—this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife—and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they are not, would not be, poised on the edge these same things inhabit when they are represented. These things exist—if indeed they are still around at all—in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife’s pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?

What am I doing with a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood, Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers? — Sylvia Plath, from "Leaving Early,” Crossing the Water. (Harper Perennial May 9, 1980) Originally published 1971.

Aside the narrow path leading from the house entrance door to the wicket, the perennials like variegated carnations and creamy color spots of pyrethrum made a curvy line looking like a kind of flowery brook falling into the odorous ocean of phloxes at the gate.

Blue lady orchid Meaning: Consumed by love Thelymitra crinita | Western Australia Perennial spring-flowering orchid. Flowers are intensely blue and form a delicate star shape. Does not need a bushfire to stimulate flowering, but can be smothered by other vegetation, so periodic burns to restrict taller-growing shrubs are beneficial.

Orange Immortelle Meaning: Written in the stars Waitzia acuminata | Western Australia Perennial with long, narrow leaves, and papery orange, yellow and white flowers. Spring blooming after winter rain. En masse these flowers are spectacular. Have been found in their millions across much of the scrub and desert in the west, with people often traveling long distances to see them.

Most dictionaries define tree as a large, perennial, single-trunked, woody plant. This is misleading, for a palm tree contains no wood. Botanists themselves do not bother to distinguish trees from nontrees. Instead, they divide plants into more precise categories, such as angiosperms (flowering plants) and gymnosperms (nonflowering). Angiosperms comprise two diagnostic types, monocots and dicots. Monocots, including palms, are less complex than dicots. They develop from a single embryonic leaf, have basic flowers and no secondary growth (wood). The rootstock is adventitious, meaning that the underground shoots develop independently; the tree has no radicle, or primary root. The simplicity of monocots enhances their agricultural tility. As crops, they supply us with essential carbohydrates—think bananas, yuccas, and edible grasses (rice, wheat, maize, cane). From a botanist’s point of view, a palm is not so different from a giant stalk of grass.

In discussing literature, they spoke of the perennial stock-in-trade of the republic of letters — woman’s sin. And they presently found themselves confronted by two opinions: When a woman sins, is the man or the woman to blame? The three women present — the Ambassadress, the Consul’s wife, and Mademoiselle des Touches, women, of course, of blameless reputations — were without pity for the woman. The men tried to convince these fair flowers of their sex that some virtues might remain in a woman after she had fallen.

Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person—only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe. The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole. Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

The Sphinx, so old that it had watched the childhood of the world, plunged in unbroken contemplation, had seen civilizations rise to glory and then slowly droop like withered flowers, had watched shouting invaders pass and repass, come and depart, come and stay. And yet it stood its ground, so utterly calm, so utterly removed from all human emotions. Something of that stony indifference to the mutations of fate seemed to have crept under my skin during the night‘s darkness. The Sphinx relieves one of all worry about the future, all burdens of the heart; and it turns the past into a cinema film, which one may watch in detachment, impersonally. (p. 34)

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among missy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping the turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed—confound 'em!—is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up—so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers—as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all!

The flowers must have been the latest generation of perennials, whose ancestors were first planted by a woman who lived in the ruins when the ruins were a raw, unpainted house inhabited by herself and a smoky, serious husband and perhaps a pair or silent, serious daughters, and the flowers were an act of resistance against the raw, bare lot with its raw house sticking up from the raw earth like an act of sheer, inevitable, necessary madness because human beings have to live somewhere and in something and here is just as outrageous as there because in either place (in any place) it seems like an interruption, an intrusion on something that, no matter how many times she read in her Bible, Let them have dominion, seemed marred, dispelled, vanquished once people arrived with their catastrophic voices and saws and plows and began to sing and hammer and carve and erect. So the flowers were maybe a balm or, if not a balm, some sort of gesture signifying the balm she would apply were it in her power to offer redress.

He opened his hand, and inside was a tiny lavender-colored flower with a small stem. "Well, well, well. Look what we have here. Mr. Exley left us a present. Cichorium intybus. Chicory. The plant of freedom and one of the nine plants. He used it to get out of the basement, and then he left us a cutting as a courtesy. Your Mr. Exley has a good sense of humor." "He's not my Mr. Exley." "Unimportant. This little petal tells us how he got out of here." "He broke a deadbolt with a flower petal?" "In a sense, yes. Cichorium intybus is a perennial related to the dandelion. It's cultivated in England and Ireland and from Nova Scotia to Florida and west to the plains. It is not cultivated here, in South America. He brought it with him!" "For what?" "For its magical properties. The plant has a long, thick taproot filled with a bitter milky-white juice. The ancient Egyptians believed that if the juice is rubbed on the body it promotes invisibility, and removal of obstacles. The Mayans called it the plant of freedom, for the same reason.

ONCE it smiled a silent dell         Where the people did not dwell;         They had gone unto the wars,         Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,         Nightly, from their azure towers,         To keep watch above the flowers,         In the midst of which all day         The red sunlight lazily lay.         Now each visitor shall confess         The sad valley’s restlessness.         Nothing there is motionless—         Nothing save the airs that brood         Over the magic solitude.         Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees         That palpitate like the chill seas         Around the misty Hebrides!         Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven         That rustle through the unquiet Heaven         Unceasingly, from morn till even,         Over the violets there that lie         In myriad types of the human eye—         Over the lilies there that wave         And weep above a nameless grave!         They wave:—from out their fragrant tops         Eternal dews come down in drops.         They weep:—from off their delicate stems         Perennial tears descend in gems.

I present... the courtyard!" The curtain slid away to reveal a wall of glass. Several production workers slid the transparent panels along the tracks until the entire room opened up onto a massive outdoor kitchen. The contestants filed outside, stunned by the extravagance. It doubled the size of their workspace. Stovetops and grills were set into brick counters. Refrigerators were tucked safely under a canvas canopy. And best of all- most thrilling of all- was a lush, vibrant perennial border that surrounded the entire kitchen, filled with edible plants, herbs, and flowers. Bright orange nasturtiums nodded in the afternoon sunshine, tender peas twined about a chicken wire fence. Bees hovered over patches of fuzzy thyme. Sophia laughed out loud. This was utterly delightful. "Your dream come true, Miss Garden Fairy?" The Scot's thick arms crossed his chest. He looked utterly disinterested. "There are fully-stocked pantries inside, as well. But the outdoor facility takes advantage of our beautiful Vermont landscape. Edibles in the garden." Mr. Smith pointed to glass-fronted coolers. "Local cheeses and other dairy products." He sauntered over to the canopied area and the cameras followed him. Baskets of fresh produce lined the tables. "We locally farmed proteins, fruits, and vegetables. Honey. Maple syrup. Anything and everything you can imagine." He took a perfectly ripe strawberry from one of the boxes and popped it into his mouth.

So, what, exactly are perennials? They’re long-lived herbaceous (non-woody) plants — flowers and herbs, mainly. How long they last depends on the plant and the conditions in your garden.

Many perennials (like most people) enjoy being fed. They respond by growing more robustly and producing more flowers. You’re fine with a general, all-purpose garden fertilizer, applied according to the label directions during the height of the growing season.

Cut flowers can outlast movies that people have poured millions into.

The age old question, what is Love? Isn't it the greatest gift from the holy one Above? Is it pure and white like a new born Dove? Does it cuddle you up,Like a hand in a Glove? Answer this hard question that what is LOVE?? the force that propels you ,through pain and despair, the benevolence,the blessings,from the heavens above, the ray of sunshine that pierces the clouds, a perennial hope, that's what is love; Its the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, Its the mirth that ends melancholy's reign, A fountain of glee,the elixir of life, Its the drug that heals,and cures all the pain; Its an eternal promise, never meant to be broken, Its the bond that adheres two hearts together, People may die and their stories may end, But their love is immortal,it lives on forever; Its the river that cuts through boulders and rocks, and the stream that flows through our barren lives, And on its long course, it leaves behind a trail Of vivid fragrant flowers,and clear blue skies; Love is felt by the heart,relished by the soul, Blissful like the divine touch of the Gods, I yearn for more ballads and more metaphors, But i fall short of verses, can't bind love in words.

The olfactory stem cells replenish constantly even in a healthy nose. They are some of the only neurons in the human body with the ability to regenerate from scratch. And they do so constantly, growing like the perennial flowers in my mother’s garden but on warp speed.

And these flowers grow, and one day they die, but they’ll grow again. These flowers are perennial. Their seed is eternal. Flower begets flower and on we must go—from now until the end of time. Always it were thus, like a line of human bellybuttons stretching back to Adam and Eve.

No, there is no getting around it. The little blue flower, the perennial of the soul, is difficult to extirpate…

It’s a plant, you idiot.” Cameron hadn’t bothered to add that it was a flowering and vining perennial, a member of the buttercup family. Native to China and Japan, brought to Western Europe in the Victorian era, and prized for its ability to climb trellises.

She watched the early-morning sun filter out from the trees still glistening from frost, and imagined the way here perennial beds would be thick and wild with beauty in just a few months. And her zinnias and sunflowers and trumpet vine would cover the fence and keep Patsy out. The messy look. That is just how Patsy described it last summer. After Elizabeth dug up the boxwoods and hollies with their geometric precision, their obedient square ugliness, she planted daisies, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, and phlox. She planted zinnias and cosmos that she had grown from seed. The border had exploded in color and texture. The plants had flowered wild and strong and generous. Every morning, Elizabeth had fingered the velvety petals.

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among mossy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

I read a quote from Absalom, Absalom! It's a reference to some of the plants that have already lost their blooms: "...and you said North Mississippi is a little harder country than Louisiana, with dogwood and violets and the early scentless flowers, but the earth and the nights still a little cold and the hard, tight sticky buds... on Judas trees and beech and maple...you find that you have been wanting that pretty hard for some time..." In his story Faulkner may have been suggesting a lustful want for the maiden Judith Sutpen, but I take it another direction. As hard as Mississippi can be, I realize now I have indeed been wanting that pretty hard for some time. If only I had known to avoid the wisteria. Instead, I said no when I should have said yes; said yes when I should have said no---and that mistake has nearly choked the life from me.

Reed is nothing like these men. Never was. Instead, he is a master of disguise. A man so broken, his form shifts completely based on the angle of the light that meets him. He's like the cleome that bloom here in Mother's garden, changing from dark pink at night to pale come morning, then to white again before the bloom falls. Or the heirloom petunias. Or the Confederate rose. Never know what we might find when we visit them. Fickle flowers, they behave as if they've forgotten who they really are, always hiding, fooling us by showing only what they want us to see. I now understand there have always been men like Reed in the world. A Judas. A wounded soul who causes tremendous harm for his own gain.

Next, I add a layer of Queen Anne's lace, its white clusters representative of the bridal veil worn by Mother and Bitsy, never by me. I can hear Mother's voice, teaching me that the flower is considered a weed by many, but she added it to her wildflower garden intentionally. She claims it has "a rebel heart, its snowflake appearance proof it was never meant to be a summer bloom at all." With its dark-purple center, this renegade flower represents all things feminine: delicate lace, the symbolic purity of snow, the red stain of suffering, and the long, deep taproot that keeps her growing against all odds.

I've stayed here in Oxford as the seasons have changed, watching summer turn to autumn turn to winter turn to spring. And in the coming cycle, I will be here once more. Season after season, year after year, as crocuses make way for summer honeysuckle, as sun-loving lantana ease out for the quieter mums, as pansies blanket the wintry town and as spring beauties burst forth again behind the snow. I'll still be here with Fisher by my side. Because this spring the stars aligned, as Marian promised they would. I picked a mid-March spray of spirea, made myself a bridal bouquet, and gave my whole heart to the man whose heart was given whole to me.

include perennial sunflowers (Helianthus spp.), various goldenrods (Solidago spp.), native willows (Salix spp.), asters (Symphyotrichum spp.), and blueberries (Vaccinium spp.). Including these plants in our gardens, along with the greatest diversity of native flowering plants we can muster, is our best defense against losing local native bee species.

Endless Love! A beautiful, young, mountain girl who loved the sea, There she always longed to be, She dreamt of someday marrying a mariner, Then there would be just the sea and her sea smelling mariner, Years passed by and she grew prettier, And with every passing year her fondness for the sea grew deeper and deeper, On one sunny summer day, she found her mariner, She loved his smile, his curly hair, she loved him because he was just a mariner, They hugged, they kissed and they smiled, Life seemed perfect, as if exclusively for the two of them styled, They got married in the midst of summer flowers, she and the sea smelling mariner, Then both moved to live their lives together at the sea, the mountain girl and the mariner, In the evening the mariner’s return from work brought with him the sweet smelling sea, It was exactly the way the mountain girl always wanted it to be, The sea, the open skies, the ever moving waves and the lap of the mariner, Where she rested her head and smelled sea on the skin of the weary mariner, Who was never tired of the sea but only sometimes tired at the sea, For everyday it stared at him in million different ways and how he loved to see, The sunset, the sprightly fish and the winding shadows of the toiling mariner, Alas the mountain girl only fancied the sea and its traces in the mariner, And gradually she grew tired of the sea and its every memory, Of the mariner too, because he smelled of the sea and that left the mountain girl less merrier, The mountain girl only fancied what she ought to have loved- the sea and the mariner, For fascinations fade away, but the sea always stayed with the mariner, Now the girl loved to hate the sea, and how she despised it! And with it, the mariner too died at the sea, bit by bit. Everyday bit by bit, For the mariner loved the mountain girl just like the sea - the poor mariner, When he saw her love for the sea and him fading away it silently killed the mariner, The vast sea is still there and so is the majestic mountain, The girl has aged now and brimming with mariner’s love just like a perennial fountain, So every night when the tide is high, the sea silently welcomes the still young but long dead mariner, And his shadow gently descends upon the naked body of the time weary woman - the warm skin kissed by the cold shadow of the mariner, Now she smells just the mariner who infact was the sea and he always wanted to be her vast and beautiful sea, For this is who the mariner was and always wanted to be- the open and the endless sea, Sea of endless love and hope for the mountain girl, Where he would dive deep and retrieve only for her the rarest pearl, For he loved her true and endlessly under the vast sky, Alas the mountain girl took a while to realise that both the sea and the mountain shall always lie under the blue and sometimes dark sky, The dead mariner still loves to spread his shadow over her skin by and by, And silently whisper to her, “I love you more than the sea, the mountains and the never ending sky!

Endless Love Like the river never stops, I too shall never stop loving you, Like those shining stars, I too shall always shine for you, Like the wind that paces through the forest where I spent few moments with you, I too shall in that forest of memories always seek you, just you, Maybe it is my compulsive proneness that I only seek you, In my wakeful state and in my subconscious slumbers I only think of you, Maybe it is my memories that refuse to exist without you, And before this stubbornness of my mind and heart , I surrender and I allow myself to love you, just you, In the Summer garden where many roses bloom, I find none like you, Like the desperate butterflies seeking their flowers of choice, in the garden of life, I only seek you, just you, The roses have wilted, butterfly wings lie strewn on the grass blades, and they all remind me of you, But unlike the changing seasons, my heart always stays in the perennial state of loving you, Everything in this universe seems to be seeking something or someone, just like I endlessly seek you, In the summer joys, in the forest wind, in the gushing river, wherever I see, I just see a reflection of you, As the palpable world grows around me in these transient forms, I seek my world within you, In your beautiful eyes, in your smiles, in your scent and in every essence that reflects you, I transpose these beautiful reflections on this world, until everything looks like you, exactly like you, Maybe Irma, love is what I feel when I see you, when I touch you, when I just say nothing and simply sit beside you, And the palpable world transforms into your smile, and I resume loving you, In the forest of my endless memories of you, Where I often tread in the brightness of the day and the silence of the night, to be with you, just you, The river still flows, the stars still twinkle, the forest still grows, and with them your love in my heart grows too, I have entered a precarious state where there is only one certainty, that to keep on loving you, And wonder if you feel so too, I have every reason to believe you do too Irma, because the trails of life we tread together, still remind me of you, and there at discrete corners I hear the echoes of your longings too, And then my heart whispers, while my mind quietly lets it be its own master, “I love you!” And the river of my feelings gains a renewed momentum to rush endlessly and forever unto you, And as lovers, we fill our senses where you become me and I become you, And what a joy it is to love you, And say again and again, “my darling Irma. I love you!

Though the garden brought no profit in winter, it had its own beauty. The white canopy over the glass house sparkled on bright days. The gazing ball grew a crystalline moon. Downy snow on the herb beds and flower gardens caught the light in soft, variant blues and mauves. Reddily clustered berries against the drifts formed a pretty picture. A frosted crescent blanketed the bench where Lavender and her father used to sit, listening to Amaryllis Fitch's divine harp concerts. And the winter garden wasn't silent, either. Chickadees in their black caps twittered about, and Lavender left a pan of seeds out for them. Rabbits' tracks crooked across the slumbering perennials and bulbs.

A collection of beautiful old adobe buildings connected by flagstone walkways sat beneath large trees. Bernie admired the way little walls gave the flowers their own separate home, calling attention to their beauty and the mountain views beyond. She knew enough to realize that such gorgeous gardens didn’t happen by accident. The mix of native plants, hardy perennials, and blooming annuals reflected a long history of steady effort.

Thought was slower than anger to flower into action, but it was a hardy perennial. It did not bloom and die.

A moss-covered path tended its way around the magnolia tree. Mark started along it, his leg brushing against the perennial border where cheerful yellow daffodils nodded their heads in greeting.