WHY FLOWERS?

Flowers are love embodied. Look deeply at the color. Feel the vibrancy. Put your nose a little closer. Look deeply. Fall inside. Start your life over right here, right now, inside a flower.” ~ Lao Tzu

Of all the extravagant beauty on our earth nothing is as colorful, varied, ubiquitous and downright flamboyant as flowers. They are not only lovely to look at, but our very lives depend on them. Most of our food comes from plants that flower, are pollinated and grow into fruits, vegetables and grains. Often the grains are fed to animals many people eat.

For a photographer flowers are perfect subjects. They can be shot on location or brought into the studio. They pose endlessly, don’t move around and need no breaks. Each blossom has its own distinctive characteristics. Their varied forms allow me to emphasize detail in a macro photograph, delineate abstract features in black and white, or portray a group of blossoms in all their brilliant color.

Luther Burbank, well-known botanist, wrote, “Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful’ they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.” How true!

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NO, NO! DON’T THROW YOUR COMPUTER AGAINST THE WALL!

                                       “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”    

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 So far I’ve resisted the urge to fling my laptop against the wall. It’s a major source of stress in my life.  The most maddening experience recently has been password problems.  The error message that informs me of my faulty memory sends me scrambling through scraps of paper where I may have jotted down the latest password or user name. Clicking on “Forgot your password?” seldom works. Recently Amazon wouldn’t accept the answer to my Security question, “When was your father born?”  I know that date as well as my own. Why does Amazon think it knows better? Grrrr!

Then, of course, there’s Facebook. Once I get the hang of how to post and locate the news of my family and all the other stuff I want to do, it changes, and I’m on the phone to one of my daughters-in-law for help. The fact that I’m willing to struggle through the frustrations, must mean I’m a masochist or the benefits outweigh the difficulties. Today I think it’s the latter. Tomorrow, who knows?

I suppose my most rational response to computer frustration is to get myself out into nature where things seem to work as they were designed to do. Breathing the clean, ocean air and looking at something father away than the computer screen does wonders for my mood.

Rhododendrons at the Botanical Gardens

This morning I woke with a feeling of dread. I’d had a rough day at the keyboard yesterday, and another session of aggrivation was not how I wanted to spend the day. Instead, I headed for the botanical gardens. An hour wandering around with my camera in that magical place worked better than any pharmaceutical tranquilizer, and I got a couple of additional benefits: some nice photos as well as big smiles from 3 of the gardeners when I gave them some of my Happiness Cards.