“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
Frequent throughout the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Mexico on desert flats, along wash banks and on rocky slopes. Mature seeds bear a plume of feathery bristles at the apex.
Bee On A Desert Chicory Wildflower — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The primitive notion of the efficacy of images presumes that images possess the qualities of real things, but our inclination is to attribute real things the quality of images.”
For they spring fresh as the mountain flower From the heart as pure and free To my lips, and die for a word of power, That would tell their depths to thee. But like the flowers on the mountain side That bloom through the wind and rain. I will constant prove, whate’er betide, Dear friend, though our paths are twain.
One of my favorite books of poetry is Riprap and the Cold Mountain Poems, by Gary Snyder.
The book includes Snyder’s translations of Han-shan’s Cold Mountain Poems. Han-shan was both a man and a mountain, a mountain madman in an old line of ragged hermits. He lived at a place called Cold Mountain, a poor poet having a crazy character. He wrote poems that were rough and fresh, and when he wrote about Cold Mountain, he means himself, his home, his state of mind.
— kenne
Gary Snyder reading “I settled at Cold Mountain long ago . . .”
Bee On Desert Chicory Wildflower — Computer Art by kenne
“If public lands come under greater pressure to be opened for exploitation and use in the twenty-first century, it will be the local people, the watershed people, who will prove to be the last and possibly most effective line of defense.” — Gary Snyder
Bee on a Desert Chicory Wildflower — Computer Art by kenne
The Song of the Bee
Buzz! buzz! buzz! This is the song of the bee. His legs are yellow; A jolly, good fellow, And yet a great worker is he.
In days that are sunny He’s getting his honey, In days that are cloudy He’s making his wax: On pinks and on lilies, And gay daffodillies, And columbine blossoms, He levies a tax
Buzz! buzz! buzz! The sweet-smelling clover, He, humming, hangs over; The scent of the roses Makes fragrant his wings: He never gets lazy; From thistle and daisy, And weeds of the meadow, Some treasure he brings.
Buzz! buzz! buzz! From morning’s first light Till the coming of night, He’s singing and toiling The summer day through. Oh! We may get weary, And think work is dreary; ‘Tis harder by far To have nothing to do.
— Marian Douglas
(from The Book of Virtues”: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories by William J. Bennett)
Desert Chicory and Bees — Images by kenne
Bee On A Desert Chicory Wildflower — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Desert Chicory Wildflowers and Bee — Image by kenne
Bee On A Desert Chicory Wildflower — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Desert Chicory — Image by kenne
Desert Chicory Bouquet — Computer Art by kenne
Desert Chicory on Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
Bee On Desert Chicory Wildflower — Computer Art by kenne
Bee on a Desert Chicory Wildflower — Computer Art by kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 