Beauty and the Beast
California Wildflowers and Climate Change
Wild Beauty, May 2024
One day, I woke up with an idea …
I wanted to write a book about wildflowers … … about the wonders of nature … the diversity of California … the hazards of climate change. I believed …
“Beauty will save the world.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
Little did I know that two photographers had already spent 27 years working on a similar idea and the book was within months of being released.
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I also didn’t know that I would fall in love with that stunning, inspirational book. I’m honored to bring you a bit of the magic of wildflowers and that book. Enjoy! joyce wycoff
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
Yellow pond lily, Mountain Meadow Reservoir, CA
Beauty and the Beast
Wildflowers and Climate Change
Rob Badger & Nita Winter, Conservation Photographers
(Cover marmot photo by Rob Badger & Nita Winter)
"Rob and Nita’s passion for the flowered world allows us to look more closely, see more deeply into the beauty of the lands we walk."
— Terry Tempest Williams author, conservationist, activist
Isn’t it pretty? … turns out, a better question would be: How do we protect it?
Photo: Rob Badger and Nita Winter Douglas Iris, Marin County, CA
"The earth laughs in flowers.”
— e. e. cummings
Feather Flower, New Mexico
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
Wild Beauty, May 2024
"Nobody sees a flower - reallyit is so small, it takes timewe haven't timeand to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.”
— Georgia O'Keeffe
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Salsify, Lake Almanor, CA
“The temple bell stops, but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.”
— Basho
Photo: BeedledeeBeedledum
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”
— Luther Burbank
Pasqueflower, Yellowstone National Park
“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
– Lady Bird Johnson
Colorado
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“Love is like wildflowers; it’s often found in the most unlikely places.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Water Fern, Gray Lodge Refuge, CA
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
"To know flowers in any real sense is to understand something of our place in the cosmos."
— Davd Bonta
Photo: Ken Pfeiffer
Tidy Tips, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
YouTube Snippets
The Honorable Harvest 3:30 minutes
minutes with psychologist Caroline Hickman
about Nature & Climate
5:17 When did the first flower bloom?
5:41 David Attenborough: The Fascinating Life Cycle of Desert Plants
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“So I ran, fearing not where I’d go; when a flower grows wild, it can always survive; wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”
— Dolly Parton
Listen to Dolly sing Wildflowers
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
"If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it becomes your whole world for a moment."
— Georgia O'Keeffe
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Mountain Dandelion, Mexico
"There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” – Henri Matisse
Photo: Ken Pfeiffer Wild Irises, Twin Lakes, CA
"A flower does not think of competing with the blossom next to it. It just blooms.”
—Zen Shin
Photo: Joyce Wycoff California Gold, Panamint Mtns., CA
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
— Oscar Wilde
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Dwarf checker bloom, Santa Ysabel, CA
"For the benefit of the flowers, we water the thorns too." – Egyptian Proverb
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Seep Monkeyflower, Grass Valley, CA
"Being aware is the first step of gratitude."
— Joyce Wycoff
"Color is the melody of light.”
— Joyce Wycoff
Honoring: World Central Kitchen
We Feed People Trailer
After seeing the National Geographic movie directed by Ron Howard, I shifted the focus of Gratitude Mojo to supporting organizations that are helping our world.
Click here donor page.
World Central Kitchen is the first. Click here for the fundraising page for them. Your donation goes straight to them and if you contribute $36 (or more) and send an email to me, I will comp you a paid subscription. Thank you for your generosity … joyce
“Together we can change the world if we really believe in it.” - José Andrés
Great news! A generous donor has agreed to match donations made in June. Click here for direct donor page.
Beginning Activism of World Central Kitchen … from 60 Minutes Overtime.
Stephen Colbert interview with José Andrés and Ron Howard
“All
are nothing but flowers in a flowering universe.”
— Nakagawa Soen-Roshi
Photo: Joyce Wycoff California poppy & friends, Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve
“I’m
going to give you a handful of wildflowers so, each petal that falls will remind you that the earth breathes, and the moon rises.”
― Carolyn Riker
Datura, Julian, CA
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
— William Blake
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Snow Plants, Lake Almanor, CA
"There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
– Henri Matisse
Photo: BeedledeeBeedledum Skunk Cabbage
Wild Beauty, May 2024
"All that mattered was the hum of the bees and the chirp of birdsong, the way the sun gleamed on the edge of a blue wildflower, the distant bleat and clink of grazing goats.”
- Alison Croggon
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
“Wildflowers adapt and bloom wherever they want. Be a wildflower.”
— Aly Aubrey
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Thistles, Mountain Meadows Reservoir, CA
23 Wild Beauty, May 2024
"There is poetry among the wildflowers.”
— Rachel Irene Stevenson
Tom Petty sings “Wildflowers.”
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Strawflowers, Julian, CA
"What a lonely place it would be to have a world without a wildflower!"
— Roland R Kemler
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Arrowleaf Balsam Root, Reno, NV
25 Wild Beauty, May 2024
"There are as many ways of loving as there are people, and that wildflower variety is the great beauty of this dimension of existence.” — Rumi
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Rose Spirea, Lake Almanor, CA
“I paint flowers so they will not die.”
— Frida Kahlo
Wailing Jennys sing “Wildflowers.”
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
Brown Eyes, Red Rock Canyon State Park, CA
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“Wildflowers, I envy them. They’re brave. Seeds cast by the wind to land where they may, they stay and hold against most hot, most cold. They persevered, roots shallow yet fierce and free. They epitomize to me all that I sometimes yearn to be.”
— Julie Andrews
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Lupin, Lake Henshaw, CA
• “A weed is
but an unloved flower.”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Dandelion, Reno, NV
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
Wild Beauty, May 2024
“Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.”
— John Steinbeck
Indian paintbrush, Santa Ysabel, CA
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
“No matter how chaotic it is, wildflowers will still spring up in the middle of nowhere.”
— Sheryl Crow
Wooly Mule Ears, Lake Henshaw, CA
Photo: Joyce Wycoff
31 Wild Beauty, May 2024
“May your life be like a wildflower, growing freely in the beauty and joy of each day.”
— Indigenous American Proverb
Photo: Joyce Wycoff Evening primrose, Red Rock State Park, CA
Thank you to Rob Badger and Nita Winter for generously sharing the incredible beauty of California wildflowers with us. Click for a video about the 27-year journey of this project.
