Daily Doodle # 29: Mixed Spring Bouquet

Spring bouquet

Daily Doodle # 8: Daffo-doodles

It’s daffodil season!

Daffo-doodles

Watercolor painting of daffodils

Robin with daffodils

Daffodils

Daffodils, 52 Wreaths Project

 

 

A Host of Golden Daffodils

Watercolor sketch of daffodils

Daffodil Wreath (52 Wreaths Project)

You can listen to actress Noma Dumezeni read Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” poem on the BBC at this link.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Daffodil: King Trumpeter

Spring bouquet

“King Trumpeter to Flora Queen,
Hey, ho, daffodil!
Blow, and the golden jousts begin.”
— from “Daffodil,” The Wind in the Trees: A Book of Country Verse, by Katharine Tynan

Watercolor sketch of daffodil

 

Goodbye Daffodils. Hello Tulips.

 

Goodbye daffodils!

Watercolor sketch of daffodils in a vase

Hello tulips!

Watercolor sketch of tulips in a vase

Cherry Blossoms: Nothing Abides

Yoshino cherry trees in bloom on the University of Washington campus

“Since every variety of tree and plant comes into bloom in its own time in one of the four seasons, we prize the timeliness and rarity of the blooming of each. . . . Now what we call hana or ‘flowering,’ what we call ‘interesting,’ and what we call ‘rarity’ are not three separate things but really one and the same.  But all flowers eventually are scattered, none stays in bloom.  And it is precisely because it blooms and perishes that a flower holds our interest as something rare. . . . to know the flowering is first of all to know that nothing abides.”
— Zeami, from Kadensho, translated by William LaFleur

“Death is the mother of Beauty.”
— Wallace Stevens

Mother and child, cherry blossom viewing

Cherry blossom viewing carries with it a Japanese sensibility, the awareness of the ephemeral.  It is heartening to see such a diverse group of people enjoying the magnificent blooming cherry trees on the University of Washington campus.  These Yoshino cherry trees are a natural wonder.

The Quad at the University of Washington

Blossoms shimmer in the sunlight

Gnarly bark

Photographing a fallen blossom

Another blossoming tree on the U of W campus

 

 

No End to Delightful Things

“It seems as if one never could get to the end of all the delightful things there are to know, and to observe, and to speculate about in the world.”
— John Burroughs, from The Writings of John Burroughs, vol. 15, The Summit of the Years

Daffodils are always delightful, spots of sunshine after a gray winter.

Daffodils at Green Lake