Flowers of Winter

“God is in every season generous, kind, good, and beautiful.”

c e hollis

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When winter sets in and the cold and drear keeps us in, the flowers of summer cheer me. Through the wonder of photography and the beauty of memory I can enjoy my summer flowers again and again. When the wind wuthers the walls and tries to whisk with a whoosh in around doors and windows and work its way down the stove chimney, I look at my flowers.

I love the colors, the pinks and purples, the oranges, the whites, blues, yellows, and the reds. Every color we can imagine flowers bring to us. Peach and periwinkle blue, mauve and butter cream, flamingo pink, pale rose, primrose and cherry red.

Even the names are beautiful: hydrangea, rose, lily, iris, petunia, geranium, daffodils, crocus, hibiscus, and tulip. There are orchids, trilliums, day lilies, gardenias, marigolds, dahlias, anemones zinnias, amaryllis, primroses and poppies.

I once had a photography teacher who said I should change my photo choices. “Nobody likes flowers,” he stated. Well, he was young so I guess he hadn’t been around enough to know how much people  love flowers. Walk through a store and see if everything from clothes to dishes and tableware, towels, even food packaging is decorated with flowers and you will know that people do love  flowers.

People love the names, the colors, the shapes, the textures, the scents of flowers. They write poetry about flowers. They give flowers to their sweethearts and use them to comfort mourners. They use them to decorate festive events like weddings and to beautify their homes. Being the draw of pollinators by shape, color and scent, that is the precursor to all our fruit and nuts, flowers are entirely center-of-the-universey. They are essential. We need them to live on the earth. yet they are graceful, beautiful and fragrant.

So while cold wind rages, rain and snow fall, icicles drip, and darkness comes early I will retreat to my flowers and enjoy them. Till spring and summer come again to my home.

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