Say It With (Prairie) Flowers

 When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. — Georgia O’Keeffe—

Mass killings. Zika virus. Politics. Refugee camps.

So much grim news in the world.

Meanwhile…the prairie concentrates on putting out flowers.

Spikes of blooms in softest vanilla…

 

Spidery ones, slung with silk…

 

Fringed, sassy flowers. Pucker up! They seem to say.

 

In just a week or two, the purple prairie clover will slip on her ballerina tutu and dance with the dragonflies.

 

For now, there are flowers that hum with activity…

 

And blooms that seem to promise that the world will continue, even as it seems full of senseless hate, violence, and bigotry.

 

There is solace among the flowers. Peace to be found in an afternoon on the tallgrass.

 

Sometimes, we need to spend some time with flowers to remind us what’s right with the world. This is one of those times.

 

Share the prairie with a friend this week.

Give someone a world of flowers.

All photos copyright Cindy Crosby (top to bottom): clouds over the Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; contrail and half moon over the Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; wild white indigo or false indigo (Baptisa alba), Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL;  sunflower with a spider (Heliopsis helianthoides) Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; daisy fleabane (Erigeron strigosus) Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) with a 12-spotted skimmer, Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL;    purple coneflower with  bee, Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; common milkweed  (Asclepias syriaca) with a bee, Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL; pale beardtongue, Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; exploring the Schulenberg Prairie at The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; pale purple coneflowers (Echinacea pallida), Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL. 

The introductory quote is by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986),  an American painter best known for her images of larger-than-life flowers.