Better Than a Bouquet

Remember that children, marriages and flower gardens

reflect the kind of care they get.

H. Jackson Brown Jr. 

I love gardens. I just don't like gardening. 

On Mother's Day, Randy treated me to a trip to Botanica in Wichita. It was free admission for all mothers and only $5 for everyone else. So we rubbed elbows with a lot of mothers and their minions that day. 

Never Too Big, a bronze by Jane DeDecker at Botanica, Wichita, KS, Dedicated Mother's Day 1995

It was better than a bouquet. 

So, today, I'm sharing the bouquet with some of my favorite photos from the day and some quotes to go with them.  And while you read, I'm off to the annual Kansas West Conference of the United Methodist Church at the state fairgrounds in Hutchinson. Wishing you a day filled with unexpected, beautiful surprises!

Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy.  

~Terri Guillemets

'Tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes!
~William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring" 

Can you find the ladybug? (Click on the image to make it bigger and then look in the upper left quadrant of the flower.)

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, 

and the eyes will take care of themselves. 

 ~Robert Louis Stevenson

I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God. 

 ~Alan Hovhaness

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, 

through which God speaks to us every hour,

 if we will only tune in. 

 ~George Washington Carver

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers

is a delectable form of defeat. 

 ~Beverly Nichols

Flowers don't worry about how they're going to bloom.  

They just open up and turn toward the light

 and that makes them beautiful. 

 ~Jim Carrey

Earth laughs in flowers. 

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson