Death sweeps away
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
As a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village.
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
Insatiable sense pleasures,
Is under the sway of Death.
As a bee gathers nectar
And moves on without harming
The flower, its color, or its fragrance,
Just so should a sage walk through a village.
—The Dhammapada, translation by Gil Fronsdale
Flowers, mom and dad at a dog park in Napa.
Obsession with sense pleasures be darned, getting outdoors today was such a relief.
Kloncke 
Beautiful photographs, beautiful words. Thanks for this post Katie, I really enjoyed it.
Cyberspace may be the perfect realm in which to regard impermanent blooms. We all enjoy sense pleasures — I think the Buddha’s point was to not let them be the goal of our life or dictate our direction.
Laura, just thinking about your mindful and skillful calligraphy practice, plus graceful and warm mom-ness, and brilliant loving way of being, makes me glad to say a cyber-hello.
Mushim, I do love the online realm, but the sense pleasures therein are so addictive for me — namely, articles! Trying to wean myself of the compulsive need to read every interesting-looking article that floats my way, daily. We’ll see how successful I am. But it really does feel like monkey-mind externalized into the tabs on my browser. Are you more of a one-tab-at-a-time kind of person?
Either way, I do definitely prefer flowers in pictures, and pretty much never pick them, myself. If I had to gather a bouquet, it would probably be of grasses.