Spring Beauty

To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music;

it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy,

than to attempt to fully understand.

      Henry T. Tuckerman

Washington DC..Cherry Blossom Time

"How many, many things
They call to mind
These cherry-blossoms!"

"How many, many things the blossoms in this photo call to mind, too.

Like… just how many are there? Lots!

The Japanese sure do know how to make nice looking river scenery in spring."

 Basho

Recently him and I took a trip to Washington D.C.  to see the Cherry Blossom Festival.  It had been on our bucket list for a very long time.  In New England spring never comes early and sometimes it doesn't come at all, we just get mud season, which is not exciting at all.  I wanted to feel the warmth of the sun.  I wanted to walk outside without being cold and I wanted to see trees and flowers blooming.  I think it was more important this year than any other.  We've been a bit down with all the trouble going on in the world and listening to news is not really an option anymore.  I am not naive about the happenings going on but a break from it all just seemed right, so this trip made perfect sense to us.  We live in a beautiful world.  Not a perfect one, but a beautiful one.  So for that week, we choose the beauty that was out there..beautiful blossoms that took your breath away.  Cotton candy colors and other trees blooming also.  Flowers and blue sky most everyday...and also beautiful people wherever we went.  I felt the sun on my face, I wore a sweater instead of a coat and the wildlife and greens of the forest were a delight...I know not everyone can get away so I thought, one more time, that I would take you back to Washington D.C., the beautiful part of the city...and let the rest go...it's what I needed to do to restore myself.  Maybe after your visit here, you'll add it to your bucket list also. No hurry, the trees will be there for a very long time I hope, spreading their beauty every spring.

 

Now, just a few of the people and buildings of Washington right close to the reflection pool.

So this is just a snapshot really of all the beauty we found on this spring trip to our Nation's Capitol.  I hope you felt a bit of the beauty here and now will go find the beauty in your own backyard...C

Come back again next time when I'll take you to Virginia...which is an all together different kind of beauty...

Cherry Blossom Time

Washington D.C., April 1st, 2017, Cherry Blossom Time...I get to check another one off my bucket list.  I'm really going after the bucket list this year.  Cherry Blossom time has been on the list for many years and quite by accident we got to go this year.  There was some talk of the cherry trees not having as many blooms because of a late March snowstorm and that storm did damage some of the trees but not nearly as many as had been predicted.  Of course we did not know this until we got there, so can you imagine our surprise and joy, at seeing this most amazing extravaganza of pink when we finally got to the basin. It simply filled our senses. A beautiful photo everywhere you turned. Lovely and happy people. The sun was in and out but it was warm.  I survived the metro in, but that's for another day, and more than once, I gave thanks for the beauty that surrounded us.  Yes, folks, this was what was happening in Washington D.C.  It is such a lovely realization that some things are not touched by politics but simply by nature.  The gift given to us by the Japanese. The plantings of cherry trees originated in 1912 as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan. In Japan, the flowering cherry tree, or "Sakura," is an exalted flowering plant. The beauty of the cherry blossom is a potent symbol equated with the evanescence of human life and epitomizes the transformation of Japanese culture throughout the ages.  I am thankful for this gift. So for all of you who won't be able to make it to Washington...I gift you the beauty that came to us that day.

I know, this last one is not from a cherry tree...but a magnolia tree.  It speaks so much of early spring that I had to include it..

It is spring time now! While the world looks for a new war to fight, you look for a cherry blossom to watch! Let the stupid seek the violence; you seek the elegance!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

I sat with the above quote for awhile, not sure if I wanted to post that on my beautiful page.  In the end, the world is what it is.  I can't change it but on any given day, I can change myself.  I choose to look for the beauty and elegance that cannot be taken away from us.  I choose spring and re-newed faith in myself. That I will continue to live in nature and light for as long as I can...and in doing so, I will continue to knock things off my bucket list, no matter where the bucket takes me.  Courage does not mean you aren't afriad, it just means you do it anyways...how else to get to the beauty.

Revival

 

March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost
where the moles have nosed up their
cold castings, and the ground cover
in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened
for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice
around foliage and stem
night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher
of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,
his large gestures beckon green
out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting
from the cotoneasters. A single bee
finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow
aconites glowing, low to the ground like
little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up
a purple hand here, there, as I stand
on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat
and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,
and my hand up, too, ready to sign on
for conversion.

Lucy Shaw