Daisies Up Close and Personal

I love flowers. Those who visit my digital home and stop for a stroll through my gardens know that about me. I find joy in walking through the gardens to see the flowers blooming. Only on rare occasions will I cut the flowers to use for arrangements. But when my little ones are visiting, they can easily and quickly pick a bouquet of my prized roses or daylilies before I can get the words out, “Don’t pick; just smell and enjoy!” To “look” at flowers in the garden is not their idea of enjoyment! To them, flowers are for picking!

Up Close and Personal with the Daisies

Last weekend, my husband brought home a bouquet of beautiful daisies to use in decorating for our daughter’s birthday. They were white with a lime green center. (By the way, green is my favorite color!). After completing the birthday decorations, I used the remaining flowers to create an arrangement for our breakfast table. The following morning as I sat enjoying a slice of buttered toast with fresh fig preserves, the new arrangement was a welcome change. Daisies in a fruit jar added a brightness to the table that was lacking with the usual bowl of fruit! I looked closer at each flower and noticed the details in each petal. Up close and personal, they were even more beautiful! I decided my grandkids are correct about the joy of picking flowers for arrangements instead of just looking at them in the garden! I will do this more often!

In photography, one of my favorite types of photos is those of flowers where I unexpectedly capture an insect or critter feasting on the nectar or munching on the leaves or petals. It is always a pleasant surprise when later I view the photos on my computer to discover a tiny bee or ladybug peeping around the edge of a flower! But to capture that type of picture, you either have to get up close with a macro camera lens or move physically closer to the object.

Up Close and Personal with Nature

Some of our greatest adventures are when we get up close and personal with nature. A favorite example is a photo I took of a hawk as I was walking in the woods behind my house. Looking up, I saw him perched on a limb of a pine tree, gazing down at me. He stayed perfectly still while I aimed my camera and began to capture his beauty. It was a moment that seemed frozen in time. It appeared he was as captivated by me as much as I was with him!

Friendships Up Close and Personal

In life, as in photography, we develop some of our most treasured friendships when we are willing to get “up close and personal” with others and build relationships that are more than just a casual encounter. Friends keep you focused! It is through the encouragement of those who know me and keep me focused on my purpose and goals that I can accomplish so much more than I would have without their friendship.

When Breath Becomes Air

When Life Meets Death, It Gets Personal

A book I recommend is When Breath Becomes Air. Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon, wrote this moving memoir when he was dying of cancer. As a young husband and father of a newborn baby daughter, Paul focused on the meaning of life as he approached his death. Watching a national news show as they interviewed his widow, she painted the story of the beauty Paul found in the last months of his life. He focused on living and learning about the meaning of life even in dying. He was up close and personal with life, his young wife and baby daughter!

At the end of the book, Paul leaves a message for his daughter that is both touching and compelling.“When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been and done and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.” Learn more about his book by visiting Amazon.com.

It is Worth the Risk!

Recently, my oldest granddaughter told me I was brave as I moved in close to get the perfect shot of a carpenter bee on a coneflower. My camera was within a few inches of my target. The lens was the only thing keeping my nose from touching the bee! The risk paid off, and the photo was more than I expected! It was worth getting up close and personal with the bee!

Friday Focus| Life at Spring Meadows

Life is worth getting up close and personal! Sometimes it gets messy but to enjoy it; you need to drop all pretenses, go for the good, and focus on it!

And I could not resist this sweet picture of our little T enjoying life as she licked the beaters clean after we made cupcakes! Yum! What a perfect example of “focusing” on what is good and not worrying about the messy parts of life.

Check out “Morning Walks Through the Woods,” and take a stroll down a well-worn path that Whinny, our horse, has made with her “day-after-day” walks! She even joins us on our trip through the woods!