Squinting into the Sun

Yesterday we visited one of our favourite local nature reserves, Dersingham Bog. The heather is in full flower, with loads of bees and insects buzzing about; more dragonflies than I’ve ever seen; and – look! – the sun even made an appearance! As evidenced by our squinting faces:

DH took this superb photo of a some cross leaved heath:

There’s something quite bizarre and alien about it, but I find it really appealing!

He also took this picture of patterns in the trail, which I am itching to turn into stitch somehow or other:

And in the garden this week, we have had a little croaky visitor:

And yet another shot that’s crying out to be turned into stitch:

Ah, nature. Just stop, notice, appreciate.

Faking It

This is kind of a continuation on the theme of fakeness…

I recently came across Bodhipaksa’s blog “bodhi tree swaying” and in particular his series on fake Buddha quotes.    With the preponderance of quotation sites online, it is easy enough to grab a “Buddha” quote to fit what you want to say…but are they genuine quotes of the Buddha?  One I have used in particular in the past is “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change“.   I love this quote; I find it inspiring and I believe that others do too.  But after reading a few of Bodhipaksa’s posts on fake Buddha quotes, I suspected that it might not be authentic.   It turns out I was right!  Bodhipaska writes:

 

It’s from page 112 of Jack Kornfield’s “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book,” in which Jack “distilled and adapted an ancient teaching for the needs of contemporary life.” This is a common pattern: if a book is called “The Teaching of Buddha” or “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book” then people jump to the conclusion that any quote from it is the teaching of the Buddha or one of the Buddha’s instructions. It’s not the fault of the author, of course…

 

So the quote is fake.  I do vow to be more mindful in attributing quotes, and checking sources.  But in some ways, I think, does it matter?  If the phrase is one which is in line with the Buddha’s teachings, and is helpful to people treading the path, how important is it that the quote be “authentic”?  I would be interested to hear others’ thoughts on this.

I have also been skimming through The Life of Milarepa (I will read it properly soon ) and came across this:

Showing others the path

When you don’t know the way

Harms yourself and others

This has become jumbled up in my self doubts of yesterday.  Though I don’t think I am trying to show others the path, but only to share thoughts that I have found helpful and others may do too.  I think if we took this Milarepa quote too literally, then there would be very few dharma teachers, and that could hardly be a good thing!  But it is certainly something to chew on.

But – hey – flowers are wonderful, in the eyes of Jack Kornfield and many others, so today I am going to share a few from my garden.  A miracle, every one of them. Enjoy

Knautia

That’s all.

Smiling with Flowers

I won’t lie. It hasn’t been the best week – what with a mixture of blocked drains, crappy weather, marital disharmony and maybe just a teensy bit of PMT-induced grumpiness. So, this morning, seeing the sun shining I thought I would pop out into the garden with the camera and see what was blooming. I am glad I did. Check out this beautiful nigella damasascena (more commonly known by the much more poetic name “Love-in-a-Mist”):

Then there is the rather striking red hot poker flower:

And this wild sweet pea, which put me in mind of Little Bo Peep:

The Earth truly does smile in flowers, and today I was able to smile with Her.

Stopping to Smell the Roses

I know, I know – the May Flower Challenge is over! But since doing the challenge, I’m really noticing flowers more and when I spotted these beautiful roses, I couldn’t resist whipping the camera out . They were in the town gardens near the public library. Waif and I were going to pick up some books, but were there a few minutes before opening time, so decided to walk around the gardens. As well as spotting the roses, we had a read of the plaques giving the history of the garden and the friars’ tower within it. I am ashamed to say that I had never read them before, despite this garden being less than a mile away from my house. Sometimes we are so busy looking elsewhere for new experiences and information that we can ignore what’s right here on our doorsteps. We just need to open our eyes…which brings me to my second index card for the ICAD2 challenge:

I’m calling it “the eyes have it”. Waddya think?

Aquilegia Love

I am loving the aquilegias in our garden right now. We seem to have more than any year before and they are such a range of beautiful colours:

There are even enough to spare for indoors:

Gman chose this jug at a craft fair we went to this week. It’s made by a local potter and sculptor called Heather Graham and I think it’s really rather nice

What’s blooming in your garden right now? For more flowery lovin, check out the other May Flower Challenge posts.

Glorious Day Out!

Yesterday, we had a glorious day out at Oxburgh Hall with a whole bunch of other home educating families.

There was a chance to plant up sage cuttings in the kitchen garden:

consort with scarecrows:

roll down grassy banks:

hide in the Priest Hole:

pose in front of the hall:

pose on the roof of the hall:

and, erm, practice sprint starts on a small bridge:

Not forgetting to hunt for flowers for the May Flower Challenge, of course:

A lovely, sunshiney day

Flowers, Friends and Fairy Cakes

What’s even better than hunting flowers?  Hunting flowers with friends of course

Yesterday we met up with the family of the gorgeous Paula aka Motherfunker, who blogs here):

and had a trip to the gardens of a local National Trust property to check out the flowers.

Here’s a few pics:

Gman brought his camera and spent some time photographing blooms. Here he is trying to get the perfect peony shot:

Afterwards, there was time to share home-made fairy cakes. And, for the boys, some frenzied Pokemon trading in the carpark

We’re all going on a flower hunt

Saturday mornings for me and Waif are spent doing chores around town while Gman goes to his acting class. This week (inspired by Lori), Waif decided to bring his camera with him and see if he could spot any flowers on his journey. He took this photo of some flowers at the bus station:

Then spotted some flowers in the architecture of the town library:

At home, the boys’ daddy was also busy taking photos of flowers, snapping this lovely pic of a wallflower in our garden:

Love it.

On Flowers, Impermanence and Hope

Here in the UK, it has rained most days for the last four weeks. So this morning, when there was a window of sunny opportunity, I dashed out into the garden to photograph what flowers I could find that were still blooming:

Those flowers may still be looking fresh, but many of the familiar early spring flowers such as pansies, daffodils and tulips were definitely past their best. Like this red tulip for example:

Not so long back this stood tall, upright and majestic with beautiful, glossy, tight blooms.

Flowers have many lessons to teach us. One of the most important, perhaps, is to remind us of the impermanent nature of the world. As Heraclitus put it:

“Everything flows and nothing abides,
everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”

But flowers are also a lesson in hope and patience. Here a tray of seeds sown by Gman last week, with seedlings popping up their hopeful little heads into the world:

In a few week’s time, these will have grown into the gorgeous gold and orange blooms of Marigolds.