Wednesday

Emerging eye candy


On spring mornings, I can hardly wait to hop out of bed, make coffee, and run outside to see what new plants have started to emerge in my garden. It’s like Christmas for me, all the little gifts of nature. I get a little tingle at the sight of each of them, from the earliest crocuses pushing through the crumbly leaves (I’m so bad at raking those up in the fall) and plump, fuzzy buds on bare magnolia branches, to the expanding colonies of self-seeding hellebores and Virginia bluebells. It fills me with gratitude. Hey, I feel an inspiring quote coming on...

What a delight it is


When, of a morning

I get up and go out


To find in full bloom a flower 

That yesterday was not there.

Tachibana Akemi



Sometimes the flowers and leaves are unfurling at such a fast pace (like, say, today, when the temps made it to the high 60s in St. Louis), you can miss them all together! In the past week since launching Power Poppy, I’ve been caught up wrapping and mailing out parcels packed with stamp sets (YAY!!! Thank you, folks!!!) and trying to keep up with everything at the kids’ school, and all the soccer and baseball and softball practices, plus other exciting graphic design projects in the works, and there’s this vintage motorcycle event that my darling Doug and I put on... I have to confess, I plum forgot to go out garden gawking. This afternoon I went out there, and saw that I’d missed all manner of emerging flowers and leaves. Wait, I feel another quote coming on...

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

from John Hughes’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off


I’m going to make a point to get out there and feed my soul some glorious gifts of nature in the morning. I’m setting that alarm extra early!

Speaking of missing things, I haven’t kept y’all posted on what’s happening in the Power Poppy online community. 

We would L-O-V-E to see you over on Pinterest, as we have juicy new boards, loaded up with the entire April collection and tons of eye-poppingly beautiful Bloom Brigade creations. GO HERE to peep Power Poppy on Pinterest! We’ll be adding much more over the next several weeks, with challenges and inspiration galore.

ALSO: Power Poppy is on Splitcoast! We want to be sure we don’t miss a single project you post—so please tag any cards you upload with powerpoppy (one word!) and we’ll all get to gawk at what you’ve been up to with our stamp designs. One more opportunity for us to feel like it’s Christmas morning... delighting in the gifts of the stamping community, seeing creativity unfurling before our eyes.

Let’s do this! And thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for the lovely emails and notes and comments of encouragement you all have sent. (And thank you for following up by ordering my stamp designs!!!) I am so humbled. I feel very, very lucky to get to do what I love, and then to share it with you all is really something cool. 

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Right On, it is so wonderful to see each new bud of growth as Spring over takes the browns and greys of Winter. When we were on our ranch in Northern Idaho I always felt so blessed to see the world of Spring come alive. Thank you for capturing what your heart sees.

Alshandra said...

I share your passion for plants and am so excited about your new blog and shop (eagerly waiting for my package to arrive)! Thanks so much for starting this new venture of yours and thanks for sharing some photos from your garden :-)

Julie Koerber said...

Oh Marce -- it is so lovely to see some of the things in your own bright and beautiful back yard! It's going to be a bit before we see flowers in Montana so I am so happy to be able to live vicariously through yours!

Katie Sims said...

Ok, love your post and all of those beautiful flowers but I am seriously cracking up right now....the Ferris Bueller quote is one of my hubs' faves! He reminds me of it often....lol! I was out doing my own garden gawking yesterday and it was wonderful! :) Big hugs to you, Marcy!

Kathy Jones said...

What a glorious garden you have Marcy!!! I just love to read your post and the joy you share!!

Dawn Y. said...

I always feel the very same way as I discover Spring surprises in my garden! Yesterday our first flowers bloomed ~ miniature purple Irises! I was soooo happy to see them after our long winter in Chicagoland. Marcella, it felt like Christmas morning earlier this week when my first Power Poppy order arrived in my mailbox! What a lovely, thoughtful way you wrapped the package! So sweet! Enjoy every minute!

Stacy Morgan said...

Yes, Life does move pretty fast. :-) My plants are blooming about the same rate as yours. Enjoy your early morning blooms.

Melanie Ann MacKenzie said...

The flowers are heavenly. Here in Ontario, Canada winter has just reared it's ugly head once again and it is snowing like mad. However, my parcel just arrived today and I stamped out every single image and cannot wait to get colouring. My mouth is watering to see what next month will bring. Cheers.

Leslie Miller said...

Gorgeous flower photos, Marcy! Beginning this time of the year I'm out there with my coffee every morning. Sometimes there's nothing new to see, but I love it just the same. What a beautiful way to start the day!

Donna Whitten said...

I love your beautiful blog with your lovely flower photos! Your new stamp sets are marvelous, I just love them! I can't seem to decide on one, I want them all!

KimDearing said...

Love your garden and LOVE your stamps! Can't wait to start stamping with them and posting to SCS! Such gorgeous images!