“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” ~ Virginia Woolf
What a luxury to have flowers at the veritable height of winter! Troubled by modern-day worries, I haven’t been sleeping as well these past few weeks, which means I’ve been waking at 4 or 5 in the morning and not getting back to sleep. On this particular morning I popped up around 5 AM, and since I didn’t have to start work until 8, I made a quick trip to the grocery store for these flowers and some groceries for the week.
What a difference a simple bouquet makes, and I’m reminded that this was something I was going to implement regularly for this winter. It’s never too late, so here we have beauty and color and fragrance. They are the first thing to greet us when we walk out of the bedroom, and they help start the day in happy fashion.
“Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.” ~ Virginia Woolf
