The resilience of flowers is something that humbles me, along with their gracefulness. Here they are blooming among the rocks of a dry Biblical land.

My own version is a self-seeded viola I found blooming at the edge of a flower pot in mid-winter.  Such delicate leaves and petals combined with such steady determination to flourish.

We then went away for a month, and I assumed it wouldn’t survive the lack of watering nor the cold snap of minus 12C.  Yet when I came home, there it was in its buttercup yellow and deep crimson parti-coloured (shouldn’t that be ‘party-coloured’?) finery, bobbing its cheery head in the breeze.

‘Hello!  You’re back!’ it said.  ‘I’ve been here all the time. All’s well.’

‘Now and then a blue wildflower, humble and graceful, emerged from between the rocks…’

Source: Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation, trans. P.A. Bien (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), p. 231

Photo credit: Mareefe at pixabay.com