Daily Doodle # 29: Mixed Spring Bouquet
April 29, 2017
Spring bouquet
Daily Doodle # 8: Daffo-doodles
April 8, 2017
It’s daffodil season!
Daffo-doodles
Watercolor painting of daffodils
Robin with daffodils
Daffodils
Daffodils, 52 Wreaths Project
A Host of Golden Daffodils
March 25, 2017
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
March 10, 2017
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.
March 30, 2016
Goodbye daffodils!
Watercolor sketch of daffodils in a vase
Hello tulips!
Watercolor sketch of tulips in a vase
Cherry Blossoms: Nothing Abides
March 26, 2014
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
March 21, 2014
“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
