hortus conclusus

I don’t know about all y’all, but I really love getting my mail, and I especially like getting packages. Especially when those packages are from other countries. Especially when those packages are from really cool bloggers from really cool other countries. Especially when you get another really awesome package, on top of the exotic first one, and that is from another really cool blogger from an equally cool, non-northern locale. especially when….Ok, you probably get my drift! (I love looking at foreign stamps. These were beautiful) Today, I was blessed with two (2!) awesome packages filled with goodies for me, only MEEEE! The first, from the lovely, thoughtful Ines of the blog All I am-a Redhead , who not only gave me a sample of the rare, unique Puredistance, but also a cute chocolate and the beautiful Tam Dao , and the equally transcendent parfum sacre . So thanks, Ines, I feel very lucky!   And if that weren’t awesome enough, I got a package containing two jasmines

I’ll let this incredible excerpt from Christopher Smart’s  (1722-1771) Jubliate Agno (see full text at pseudopodium.com ) speak for its own crazy, fabulous, hallucinatory self. He wrote this weird, sprawling, obsessive religious poem at least partly while in an insane asylum, locked up for his supposed religious mania. I think he must have written this part in there, in a wistful remembrance of the beauty of the natural world outside his confinement. Here’s to flowers, in the bottle and out of it! FROM JUBILATE AGNO: For the doubling of flowers is the improvement of the gardners talent. For the flowers are great blessings. For the Lord made a Nosegay in the meadow with his disciples and preached upon the lily. For the angels of God took it out of his hand and carried it to the Height. For a man cannot have publick spirit, who is void of private benevolence. For there is no Height in which there are not flowers. For flowers have great virtues for all the senses. For the flo