Earth laughs in flowers

This weekend was nuts. My dad and I made major progress on the coop. We had 2 soccer games. We took a bunch of little boys hiking for my son’s 7th birthday. And we hosted my friend Shannon’s photography workshop. Part of the workshop was a practice shoot of a bride and groom. Shannon was sweet enough to leave the bouquet behind for me to enjoy. She had no idea, but my two very favorite flowers were in the bouquet: peonies and ranunculus.

My oldest daughter has been just as enamored with the flowers as I have been. Yesterday morning she came down stairs after dressing herself in yellow & pink. She asked me to take pictures of her with the flowers because they ‘matched’. This is the part of having a little girl that still baffles me. With each new day she does stuff that is such a far cry from her brothers. Never. Not once. Never have any of the three boys ran upstairs to put on clothes that matched flowers and asked me to take pictures of them. If they had done that, it would have been because there was some kind of ulterior motivation. She is such a beautiful combination of tough tomboy and total girly girl.

Naturally, I grabbed my camera, my 85mm lens and happily headed out back with my girl.

After a few ‘sweet’ photos, her true colors came shining through. Firecracker.

As I loaded these on my computer and looked at each one I couldn’t help but think about her wedding day. Pretty sure it will be necessary for her to pose like this on that day for me.

The flowers got really heavy for her, probably weighed as much as she does. So we tried something else.

“Earth laughs in flowers.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a beautiful word picture. What a lovely way to think of flowers….laughter springing forth from the earth.

My daughter sees that, she delights in laughter and beauty. She teaches me to slow down and do the same.