flowers force me

"Flowers force me to live in the "now". That is at least what Jesus meant in commanding us to "Consider the lilies"." Makoto Fujimura 

May showers

May showers, and showers and showers brought us June flowers. I have creamy yellow and white roses to paint.

magnetic pull of place

Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again “But why had he always felt so strongly the magnetic pull of home, why had he thought so much about it and remembered it with such blazing accuracy, if it did not matter,..."

I've heard the phrase "you can't go home again" for years. I was aware that it was the title of a book by Thomas Wolfe, but I also thought it was a platitude or folk saying that explained away changing times and places.

I made a trip to my childhood home recently and found many things that I had loved to be unchanged. I grew up in the Philippines, lived there for my first 18 years until I finished high school and went off to the United States for college. Something in me remains critically attached to the places, sights, smells, and flavors of this lovely country.

My Baptist missionary parents travelled with me as an infant to Manila in the 1950s. Politically the country was recovering from war, occupation by the Japanese forces, liberation by the American forces, and finally an independent government. My parents saw so much as they lived there for forty years. Their informed outlook and love for the Filipinos was influential in my life as well. 

blue cornflowers white lace

all spring

“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.” 
― Emily Dickinson

Blue Ridge mountains

weddings

This painting of an iris on a spectacular spring day I gave as a wedding gift a few years ago.
Titled "Wedding Iris", of course. Events in the news lately brought to mind the moment.

love one another

“If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

never poor

Then Martine said: “So you will be poor now all your life, Babette?” “Poor?” said Babette. She smiled as if to herself. “No, I shall never be poor. I told you that I am a great artist. A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor. We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing.”
Babette's Feast and Other Stories  by Isak Dinesen (Author)

dreams don't grow old

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. Gabriel Garcia Marquez