What The Butterfly & The Flower Have In Common.

("Butterfly Wings" caught on a trip to the jungle. Of the 22, I was the only one gifted with this sight, because - I was looking for a butterfly.)

The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.

- Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun


Flower and butterfly,
What they share in common is beauty,
What they have in common is the gift to delight.

- Ghostwise

~~~~~~~~~~~

I've watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! Indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless! - not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

- William Wordsworth, "To a Butterfly"


I watched you for a full half-hour,
And did not realize a full half-hour has gone by.

- Ghostwise

The Miles I Traveled, The Things I Saw.

(On the way to Taman Negara, we stopped to smell the flower in Lanchang like this bumblebee.)

The world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends.

-Persian Proverb


Your friend is a rose; keep him by your side.

- Ghostwise

~~~~~~~~~~"

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

-Louis L'Amour, novelist (1908-1988)


In the haste to get to the destination, they forgot about the journey.

- Ghostwise.

You Can Do Worse Than Marry A Gardener.

(Today I did a bit of gardening after my plumbing failed and flooded the bathroom. These are orchids from my garden.)

I have found, through years of practice, that people garden in order to make something grow; to interact with nature; to share, to find sanctuary, to heal, to honor the earth, to leave a mark. Through gardening, we feel whole as we make our personal work of art upon our land.

- Julie Moir Messervy, The Inward Garden,


A gardener is an artist of the land.

- Ghostwise

~~~~~~~~~~"

The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.

- Vita Sackville-West, 1892 - 1962


You can do worse than to marry a gardener.

- Ghostwise

The Sound Of Basho.

(I was still troubled. So I sat quietly in the room and listened to silent sound of the haiku of Basho. It was a time for listening so no word was spoken.)

All along this road
not a single soul - only
autumn evening comes


Heard, not seen,
the camellia poured rainwater
when it leaned


This dark autumn
old age settles down on me
like heavy clouds or birds

- Basho (translated by Sam Hamill)