The flower is
the stem’s cry of beauty
to the universe.
-Vassilis Comporozos

Thimbleberry flower, Washington State.

These pink and red poppies

were also found bursting in bloom in Washington state.

We can’t grow peonies at The Holler, but I buy them in season,

to display in bouquets.

Holler white rose.

Holler sweet peas.

We had loads of blooms this year due to the wonderful rain.

Rhododendron Washington State.
Cheers to you from summer’s smiling flowers~
Reblogged this on ravenhawks' magazine and commented:
Beautiful!
Awww, so kind of you & so appreciated too!
This is my favourite time of year Cindy, when all the flowers are in bloom.
Leslie
Isn’t it wonderful with all the amazing scents!
I do love the perfume of the air this time of year.
xoxo
It is psychologically beneficial <3
It’s a real mood booster for me.
That makes me happy <3
<3 xoxo
<3
Perfect pictures of gorgeous flowers/blossoms!
Thank you & very happy you enjoyed 🌻
Reblogged this on charles french words reading and writing and commented:
Here are more beautiful photographs from Cindy Knoke!
So appreciated Charles & hope you are enjoying your extended 4th of July weekend 🌻
Oh Cindy! That thimbleberry was fresh and new to me!
And my husbands grandmother used to grow peonies and I half liked them! Pretty blooms but a weird look to their shrub!
Your blooms here were so pretty
The thimbleberry was new to me too, and I was about 99% certain of the identification! So happy you enjoyed and thank you for letting me know 🌻
😊🌸🌺🌼
Grazie mille 🌻
Wonderful. Even the little sweet peas – they don’t compare to the others in looks – but I could smell their sweet scent. Beautiful close-ups. Who would think that a thimbleberry would be so beautiful?
The thimbleberry was new to me and it is one of those amazingly beautiful tissue paper flowers. So pleased you enjoyed! I have vases of the sweet peas around the house and I so love their scent 🌻
Yes, yes, yes. So sweet.
Sweet knows sweet <3 🌻
Beautiful. We had big Icelandic Poppies at an old place in the mountains, years ago. Love ’em.
I love them too and grew them at our house before this one 🌻
Beautiful! Peonies are my very favorite flower but we can’t grow them here on the coast either. Thank goodness for Trader Joes!
Shop TJ for the best priced flowers!! I know I do 🌻
So beautiful! It’s funny that you can grow roses but not peonies. I love peonies. 🙂
I love peonies too, but our climate will not grow them, so it is a thrill once a year when they are available in the stores.
Many familiar friends – except the thimbleberry – but your photos make them look exotic! The bouquet of peonies is a winner!
Wonderful to hear from you Peter. Hope all is well with the two of you <3
All is fine at present, thanks dear Cindy! Some medical sagas in progress; more on that later…
I know you know I am thinking and praying for you both <3
Gorgeous!
Ah, so appreciated, thank you! 🌻
They’re all so very beautiful, Cindy!
You are very thoughtful. Thank you 🌻
You’re quite welcome.
<3
Stunning. The white rose may be my favorite. Thanks for bringing smiles.
Thank you for bringing a smile to me 🌻
Beautiful flowers. My peonies don’t last long and they get so covered with the ants that are necessary for them to open. I rarely have enough pretty flowers to bring inside. You have some gorgeous flowers there.
I would so love to grow peonies and I love rhododendron but they also won’t grow here. I have to travel to see them 🌻🌻
If you ever in Portland, I can take you to the Rhodie garden. Peonies are so short lived here too. I have Rhodies on my hill but they bloom and are then gone.
I am going to come to Portland! What a wonderful invitation. Thank you <3
What a glorious array of colour. I love Peonies. They are such a gorgeous array of lushiouness (if there is such a word). Rich, beautiful perfume and a larger than ordinary roses makes them well worth growing. Rhododendrons are not far behind them as a wonderful flower to grow.
Looks like all the rain you had was a real boost to your garden 🙂
Lushiousness. It is now a word that I love that you created <3
Emerson was right: The earth certainly does laugh in flowers. 🙂
Joy is lurking there, as you well know <3
Yes, indeed! 🙂
Wow! What a display of rich colours and exquisite beauty in your photo essays on flowers, Cindy!
Thank you Peter, we live in a beautiful world <3
My grandmother planted peonies at our house when I was a child. They were always in perfect bloom for Memorial Day, when we would visit the graves of our relatives. Lovely pictures. Thanks.
Oh, that is so moving. What a wonderful thing for your grandmother to do <3
I particularly love the flowers taken against the black background. Very striking!
I am so lucky to meet people like you Liz <3 Thank you 🌻
stunning beauty, just what we need more of!
love, Linda
We do indeed <3 Love to you Linda 🌻
Incredibly beautiful!
I think they are here for us to notice and make us happy <3
Yes indeed! I agree.
<3
😎
THE COLOURS ARE FANTASTIC AS ARE THE PHOTOGRAPHS CINDY, CHINA
china.alexandria@livingthedream.blog
So happy you like them & thank you China <3
Reblogged this on LIVING THE DREAM.
Thank you China. You are very kind 🌻
I like them all
I like you for liking them. Thank you <3
Thank you Cindy😊
<3
Hi Cuz, you know I like the hummers…, mini-miracles☘ have you been affected by the earthquake or are you far enough away from them? ☹ Hugs x 100🌺
The quakes have not us affected us, yet. Thank you for caring cuz. There have been quite a cluster though, hundreds and hundreds of small quakes. Another sizeable one is expected. It is just a question on when, in Cali, of course, regarding a really big San Andreas quake, but risk is calculated in geologic time, so 1000 years isn’t even a whisper. Still there is a lot of activity and it makes you check your earthquake supplies. Hugs back to you & hope you are well <3
Exquisite flowers!
Merci beaucoup mon ami 🌻
De rien! 🙋
<3 💮
Beautiful abundance, and I am in love with your sweet pea blooms.
Thank you! I so love sweet peas. Lately I have been gone when they need to be planted, but this year I wasn’t. And I am so thrilled to have them. Their scent and everything about them makes me happy. Wonderful to hear from you & I hope you are well <3
🙂 🙂 🙂
Georgia O’Keeffe would be very pleased. Flowers give us so much beauty and ask for so little in return.
Such a perfect statement. Thank you Rebecca 🌻
What beauty!
Ah, thank you my friend and I sincerely hope you feel better <3
Bless yers. X♥
<3
I adore white flowers, so the Thimbleberry flower and the Holler white Rose are the most beautiful to me, though all of them are gorgeous. Wonderful photos, Cindy, as ever 🙂
Awww, I love my awesome blogger friends <3 White flowers have an ethereal beauty don't they. I love them too 🌻
Exquisite! You captured some beautiful images; colors, shapes and textures. Flowers are d’bomb!
Thanks for your art!
Thank you so much!!! Flowers are d’bomb 🌻
Beautiful blossoms Cindy. I too love peonies.
They are on my wedding invitation which is framed on our wall 🌻
Great shots of beautiful flowers.
Thank you Timothy <3
So very beautiful, each one.
Thank you. Maybe they are here for us to take time and notice.
Its beautiful Cindy. AMAZING indeed ! ☺
Ahh, thank you & cheers 🌹
I love poppies. The Thimbleberry is a new to me flower, very beautiful…and quite poppy-like. Gorgeous photos 💚
It was new to me also. I wish I was there when the berries ripen. I would love to taste one. They are native plants and look a lot like raspberries but are not the same.
Oh, interesting!
<3
How unutterably fantabulously gorgeous!
Smiling and love your word usage 🌹
Absolutely exquisite ! ‘ A thing of beauty’, just what the soul needs. So good, well done.
Ahhh, so kind & you make me happy I posted. Thank you <3 🌹
wunderschöne Blumen, liebe Cindy, beste Grüße sende ich dir, Klaus
Vielen dank mein lieber Freund <3 🌹
immer wieder gerne
Du bist ein guter Mensch <3
vielen Dank, du auch, alles Gute wünsche ich dir
<3
immer wieder gerne
Gorgeous 🧡🧡🧡
Merci beaucoup 🌹
What a brilliant quote. I better understand the stem now. And thank you for the glory of these pictures today!
You make me smile <3 🌹
Then I have done something of value today 🙂
Love to you.
<3
Lovely
Grazie mille 🌹
Thanks for the cheerful flower parade to start my day Cindy. 🙂 I love flowers, but didn’t know sweet peas bloomed in so many colors!
You can get them in monochromatic colors, but who would want to! Thanks much Brad and have a wonderful week 🌹
Agreed! 🌹
<3 <3
Lovely!
Grazie!
Reblogged this on Musings on Life & Experience and commented:
Photos of gorgeous flowers taken by Cindy Knoke to share with us.
Many thanks Patricia & Happy Sunday my friend 🌹
Shades of Georgia O’Keefe! Impressive, Cindy!
Thank you! You are second person who noticed a similarity with Georgia. How lovely 🌹
The sweet peas lined the roads on the way to Foresthill last weekend. We stopped near my dad’s house to shoot a few with my camera and managed to get a few monarchs in the process! I love the peonies, well I love them all, Cindy!
I can barely imagine sweet peas lining roads. How amazing this would be!
I am a harsh critic of flower photos because most that I see are simply not good. The outer two-thirds from the pistil are typically soft, blurry and fuzzy. The outer petals have no detail or clarity. A flower is a beautiful thing to see in all of its colorful glory, but most photographers are not able to capture the essence of that beauty. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the focal distance, or possibly the wrong lens. Whatever the reason, a decent image is difficult to capture.
Having said all that, may I say that these photos were a pleasure to view.
Cindy, can you share any tips on how you captured these photos? Focal distance? Macro lens? Depth of field? Or maybe just plain skill?
Anyway, I wasn’t going to bother clicking on this post because flower pics usually disappoint me, but your talent and skill have been consistently showcased on this blog so I wasn’t surprised by the images posted.
Your comment are so kind and thoughtful, they left momentarily speechless. Thank you very much for taking time to share such encouraging thoughts with me, and they do encourage me. You make me happy I posted.
For outside flowers (and wild animals and birds), I always use my Sony HX400. The 400 has a variable zoom lens that can reach up 1200mm equivalent with no tripod necessary. The outdoor flowers you see here were taken at the maximum zoom possible to maintain focus. The indoor photos were taken with my Sony RX10 M4. I use flash and a black background to bring out the depth of color. I always crop photos and adjust contrast to bring the flowers glory forward.
I do agree with you, flowers are such perfect things, all we need to do as photographers is not let our photos get in the way of their beauty.
Thank you very much for your thoughtfulness and it is lovely to meet you.
Creation is just that way
Yes. It is. Smiling <3
Gorgeous!
Merci beaucoup mon ami <3
De rien!
<3
Thanks to your photos, I can smell the fragrance of these beautiful flowers. How I love them all. Here in NE the peonies were amazing this year. When I lived in the SF Bay area, I adored the poppies. Sometimes the beauty of roses just makes me cry joyfully.
What beautiful sentiments <3 Thank you for sharing them with me & I would love to see your peonies.
These are some of summers best.
Thank you Darnell & cheers to you my friend~
Sooo gorgeous, Cindy! Isn’t Mother Nature wonderful when she provides such a feast for eyes and noses?!!
She is the universe’s most amazing artist <3
Beautiful blooms,, good you had rain and look a the plants gratefulness, they thank for the rain with their beauty.
They do indeed. And I am grateful. You see things well <3
Loved the flowers, Cindy!!!
My favorites were your Holler sweet peas – just gorgeous.
Thanks so much for posting these awesome images.
I <3 my friends who <3 sweet peas. Thank you.
Great pics. Beautiful flowers. Mother nature is so wonderful !
She just wants us to notice <3
While they are all beautiful, #4 especially grabs me. I’m not a white flower fan, but #4 is **so** subtly lit and composed …
Oh, thank you so much. Peonies are layer upon layer of beautiful mystery.
You are an amazing artist. I really HAVE to reblog this because it’s so incredibly beautiful I can’t stop myself. Thank you.
I know how very lucky I am to know you <3
Pingback: Floribunda~ — Truly gorgeous photographs from Cindy Knoke…be sure you don’t miss a single one. | Rethinking Life
You are why I love blogging <3
glorious!
Alison
Love to you Alison <3
Life is going on! Flowers are beautiful!
Your previous post with lovely poem is the witness of that.
Thank you. Be well.
Beautiful, colorful via your lens, Cindy! 🙂 Love every single one of these photos.
Love back to you talented Amy <3
What a beautiful quote and those gorgeous blooms are a wonder to look at!
Thank you. All the beauty in this world is so much more powerful than everything else.
This is so true…that’s why we keep taking beautiful photographs and writing down what we see and experience!
We prove beauty <3
Hi Cuz,
The Flowers and the pics are gorgeous. I’m assuming that all are growing in your back yard. Are you anywhere near where all the quake activity is taking place??? Concerned !
How did this happen? How did I meet people like you here in blogdom? All I know is that I am blessed by knowing you. Be well Paul <3
We Bartons have a way of finding one another congregating whether it’s in blogdom or otherwise. 🌺
We are a cool clan <3
great shots Cindy!
I have such admiration of you. Thank you.
and thank you Cindy!
<3
Thank you for sharing this beauty!
Thank you more for seeing it <3
😍
Your article on the flowers in your area is certainly beautiful and very welcome from another flower lover. I am a seed/bulb/cutting collector and I try to especially find anything from flowers that I can plant and encourage to grow. Years ago I dug up some violets from a lot where an old mobile home was to be moved. I took them with me when I moved to another nearby city, and planted them in my yard. I cannot believe how quickly they spread, and they grow huge even in soil I thought was not that great. I love all flowers, and it is such a joy to grow them and watch them come to bloom. In this world of everyday worries and concerns, it is such a refreshing break to remember the beauty and peace that flowers bring into our lives. Thank you most kindly.
Oh, I so love your comments! ”
In this world of everyday worries and concerns, it is such a refreshing break to remember the beauty and peace that flowers bring into our lives.”
Yes indeed! Flowers speak to us of timeless hope and lift our spirits accordingly. I can well imagine your joy seeing the orchards grow and flourish. Where we live there are 60+ year old almond trees, tangerine trees, roses and camellias, in addition to the old orchards. I often wonder about who planted and cared for these other trees. Obviously someone who maintained the orchards and wanted even more growing trees around. What a wonderful gift this person left us <3
Stunningly beautiful shots, Cindy! They are so gorgeous, some of the scents came through! Thank you! ❦🌹❦
Awww, love to you Resa.
Love to you Resa & I envy your acute senses <3
Now that’s what I call a stunning rainbow of beauty. <3
Mother Nature is looking out for us <3
We sure can hope. <3
I can’t get over how well you capture the colours in your photos, just beautiful.
I can’t get over how lucky I am to meet people like you <3
The wondrous gift of nature!
Indeed <3
Summer flowers! Good that you have rain this time of year in your Holler (Washington State usually has rain, from what I recall when I lived there). We have the East Coast thunderstorms with 1, 2, 3 inches at a time. Lovely to get under the metal roof of the porch just before the clouds open up, then sit with our ice coffee while the storm passes. – Oscar
Oh, that sounds idyllic Oscar <3
The real glamour girls of summer. Lovely
No artifice about them. They are natural beauties.
Beautiful look at these floral beauties, Cindy. The center of the white, thimbleberry flower really attracted my attention. <3
Thanks much! Isn’t it a gorgeous bloom. I love the fragile tissue-paper flowers.
Lovely photos!
Grazie mille <3
are they retouched
Regards
Townsend
Yes. I edit. Regards back to you.
Your photography is gorgeous!
You are very kind. Thank you <3
So beautiful!! Mom and I love the fragrance that fills the air!
You, your Mom and I, are all in accord! <3
Glorious summer flowers, Cindy, and a pleasure to enjoy the intimacy that your photographs offer.
What a lovely comment! Hope all is well with you my friend <3
So perfectly, vividly beautiful. Cindy, the lighting on these shots is so perfect. Each one is gorgeously captured. Hugs.
Ahhhh, you are very kind Teagan & much appreciated my friend <3
Cindy, I can almost smell them from here. If you find yourself in Washington in April, check out the Tulip Festival at La Conner. There is field after field of tulips with Mount Rainer in the background. It is stunning. When visiting a cousin who lives in Everett, she took me to the festival and the photos I got were amazing so I know yours would be even better. For a preview, I found this link. https://youtu.be/PsNXjUWTTVI Bisous mon amie. <3
Oh it looks like the Keukenhof Gardens in The Netherlands which are so incredible. The largest tulip garden in the world. I will add La Conner to my bucket list and hopefully visit someday. Thanks for the tip & all the best to you dear Lea <3
I’ve been to the Netherlands and you are correct. I do hope you make it up there, I’m selfish, I want to see your photos! 😉 <3
Love to you Lea <3
Et toi aussi, mon amie! <3
Woooowwwwwww!!! You made it again!!!! 🤩❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Laughing……You are very kind <3
Beautiful pictures!
Grazie mille <3
I also love peonies! Those are gorgeous and that white rose is lovely. Those reminded me of my fathers funeral by now. Specially that Rose would be very beautiful on the coffer. Flowers are with us in joy and in sadness!
Yes. flowers help us celebrate and grieve. My sincere condolences to you on the loss of your father <3
Thank you Cindy! 💟
<3
Reblogged this on SUSANNE LEIST.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness Susanne & be well my friend <3
Gorgeous pictures, Cindy
Merci beaucoup mon ami!
Stunning photographs and poetry 💖💕🌷🌳🍃
Most kind of you! Many thanks <3
💖💕🌷🌳🍃XO
I love all the bright color with such a variety. Gorgeous blooms.
Thank you Joyce. We live in a beautiful world <3
Glorious flowers.
Mille grazie.
all the flowers are in full bloom
They are. They cheer us up with their pure kindness.
Gorgeous.
Mille grazie Cynthia.
So wonderful!
Grazie mille <3
Reblogged this on Smorgasbord Blog Magazine and commented:
What a wonderful way to end July with fabulous images from Cindy Knoke, The flowers are stunning and the sweet peas and peonies are probably my favourites.. Anyway your segway into August and if you head over to Cindy you can read about their water disaster while they were away… and enjoy more pictures of the Holler.. but be warned.. once you are in Cindy’s archives you will be there for a while… #recommended
Awwwww……You are the sweetest friend and you have touched my heart. Thank you dear Sally for your thoughtful, generous friendship, and be well always <3 <3
That is reciprocated Cindy ♥
<3 <3
A wonderful collection of natural gems. Thank you for sharing Cindy! Hope you had a nice week, and will have a wonderful weekend, starting soon. Best wishes, Michael
Best of everything to you Michael & thank you for your kindness.
Always a great pleasure to me, Cindy! Thank you for all the positive thoughts! Michael
Be well my friend.
Thank you Cindy! You too. Michael
<3