Look Very Closely

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf and take an insect view of its plain.

--Henry David Thoreau

A Single Flower

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

--The Buddha

Connections

We must learn not to disassociate the airy flower from the earthy root, for the flower that is cut off from its root fades, and its seeds are barren, whereas the root, secure in mother earth, can produce flower after flower and bring their fruit to maturity.

--The Kabbalah

When all is said and done, is there any more wonderful sight, any moment when man's reason is nearer to some sort of contact with the nature of the world than the sowing of seeds, the planting of cuttings, the transplanting of shrubs or the grafting of slips?

--St. Augustine of Hippo

He who plants a garden plants happiness.

--Chinese proverb

The garden is a ground plot for the mind.

--Thomas Hill

I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day.

--Frank Frankfort Moore

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,

I keep it staying at Home --

With a bobolink for a Chorister,

And an Orchard, for a Dome.

--Emily Dickinson

Grasses

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

--Buddhist proverb

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.

--"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

--"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

--"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.

--Thomas Edison

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

--Henry Miller

How Happy Flowers Are!

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars ... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers -- happy for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

--Osho

They tell us that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable -- soul-less. I think that is something that we know exactly nothing about.

--John Muir

We have much to hope from the flowers.

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Earth laughs in flowers.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The temple bell stops

but I still hear the sound

coming out of the flowers.

--Basho

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.

--Henry Ward Beecher

Stars of earth, these golden flowers; emblems of our own great resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

--Ninon de Lenclos

Petals of the peach blossom

unfolding in the spring breeze,

sweeping aside all doubts

amid the distractions of

leaves and branches.

--Dogen

Patapsco State Park

Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?...


And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
--William Shakespeare, As You Like It

"I learn by going where I have to go"

"The Waking"

--a poem by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.


We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.


Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.