MySpot: Fresh and Fearless

"It is one of the first days of Spring, 

and I sit once more in the old garden where I hear no faintest echo of the obscene rumbling of (...) streets 

which are yet so little away.  

Here the only movement I am conscious of is that of the trees shooting forth their first sprays of bright green, 

and of the tulips expanding the radiant beauty of their flaming globes, 

and the only sound I hear is the blackbird's song -- 

the liquid softly gurgling notes that seem to well up spontaneously from an infinite joy, 

an infinite peace, at the heart of nature 

and bring a message not from some remote Heaven of the Sky or Future, 

but the Heaven that is Here, beneath our feet, even beneath the exquisite texture of our own skins, 

the joy, the peace, at the Heart of the Mystery which is Man.  

For man alone can hear the Revelation that lies in the blackbird's song."

Havelock Ellis - Impressions and Comments

Tulips in Spring

"I love tulips better than any other spring flower; 
they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, 
and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady 
whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. 

Their faint, delicate scent is refinement itself; 
and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun. 
I have heard them called bold and flaunting, but to me they seem modest grace itself, 
only always on the alert to enjoy life as much as they can 
and not be afraid of looking the sun or anything else above them in the face."

Elizabeth von Arnim

MySpot: Autumn in the Park

"We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,

flapping in the winter rain,

falling flat and washed."

Anne Sexton

Grace, Beauty, Spirit and Freedom

"A thousand horse and none to ride! -

With flowing tail, and flying mane,

Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,

Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,

And feet that iron never shod,

And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,

A thousand horse, the wild, the free,

Like waves that follow o'er the sea,

Came thickly thundering on (...)."

Lord Byron - Mazeppa

Pink Garden

"If, I can someday see M. Claude Monet's garden, 

I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colours and tones, 

less an old-fashioned flower garden than a colour garden, so to speak, 

one that achieves an effect not entirely nature's, 

because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colours will bloom at the same time, 

harmonized in an infinite stretch of blue or pink."

Marcel Proust - Splendours

MySpot: Black&White Spring

"A light exists in Spring

Not present in the year

at any other period

When March is scarcely here."

Emily Dickinson 

MySpot: Autumn Carries more Gold in its Pocket

"Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. 

The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple."

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

MySpot: Autumnal Flash

"Use what you have, use what the world gives you. 

Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. 

Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: 

apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. 

The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art."

Shauna Niequist - Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way