I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose would be as nice if it were called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.
~ Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1908

Okay this post is definitely a bit drippy, but sometimes that’s just how it goes…

I recently bought myself a pretty bunch of multicolored roses, and the other day I found myself just zoning out, staring at them—trying not to think about anything at all. The closer I looked, the more drawn in I became by the intricacy of their design. The fine details of these three roses made me think of other things—the soft, muted pink of the innermost spiral of a seashell, the ivory swirl of cream that’s just been lightly stirred into coffee, and the bright, warm tones of the sun as it begins to set.

Most of the time, I might glance at a flower and appreciate its beauty as a
whole—how pretty it looks in a vase on my table, adding cheerful color to the
room—and then move on. But this time I looked closer. Like really looked. It stopped being just a bunch of roses and instead became tiny pieces of architecture. Intention woven into every fold of a soft petal, one leading into the next in a continuous, mesmerizing swirl.
It kind of reminds me of that idiom…Can’t see the forest for the trees. But in my case, that’s kind of the point.

The structure of a rose almost has a mathematical quality in the precise way the petals spiral out from the center as they unfurl in my sunny window. But it’s also like a small miracle—how precise and perfect they are, and how they evolved and were cultivated into these majestic swirls of delicate color, light, and softness.

What can I say? These are the kinds of strange little thoughts I have when I’m trying not to think about anything at all.