Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul. – Alice Walker

 

I have always loved flowers. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the fields of red poppies or vibrant yellow rapeseed across Europe, the Redbud and Dogwood trees here in Ohio this spring, from the small garden in my backyard, or the grocery store checkout, I simply love flowers.

To me, there is something about a flower’s quiet beauty that turns me inside out and makes my heart happy. Flowers don’t demand attention. But if we take time to notice, they give us something intangible — something which to me feels like peace.

I love what Alice Walker said, when we create beauty, we’re restoring our own souls. I believe it to be true.

Two years ago, I put a flower garden in outside my kitchen window, and later wrote about it here. I started with a shovel, landscape fabric, mulch, and an assortment of plants. My top two priorities were to plant peonies and roses.

Roses go unsaid; I adore them, and have written about and shared photographs of them many times here. But peonies are one plant which bloom and once they do, they take over the garden with their beauty. This past week, I’ve been captivated.

Peonies from the Garden

It’s a very short trip. While alive, live. – Malcolm Forbes

 

 

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. – Johann von Goethe

 

 

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all. – Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. – Chinese Proverb

 

In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. – Christopher Morley

 

Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. You’re only here for a short visit. So be sure to stop and smell the flowers. – Walter Hagen

 

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. – Rabindranath Tagore

 

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks — the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. — Nature’s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. – John Muir

 

Do you have a favorite peony or flower? Share your photos (you should be able to attach or link) here with us!