欧宝娱乐

“I don't know what it's like for other people, but love and nausea are often indistinguishable to me”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“And the time sundials tell
May be minutes and hours. But it may just as well
Be seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.
No, I don't think of time as just minutes and hours.
Time can be heartbeats, or bird songs, or miles,
Or waves on a beach, or ants in their files
(They do move like seconds鈥攋ust watch their feet go:
Tick-tick-tick, like a clock). You'll learn as you grow
That whatever there is in a garden, the sun
Counts up on its dial. By the time it is done
Our sundial鈥攐r someone's鈥� will certainly add
All the good things there are. Yes, and all of the bad.
And if anyone's here for the finish, the sun
Will have told him鈥攂y sundial鈥攈ow well we have done.
How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,
That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass.”
― John Ciardi, The Monster Den: or Look What Happened at My House 鈥� and to It

“She forced herself to sit up primly on the edge of the marble bench, repressing firmly the nausea she felt at its warm pressure, and she smoothed the black linen of her dress across her lap, and tucked in her hair, which had somehow come loose, and crossed her ankles decently, and took her black-edged handkerchief from her bosom and dried her eyes and wiped away the dampness and grime from her face. Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Sundial

“With warning hand I mark time's rapid flight
From life's glad morning to its solemn night
Yet through God's love, I also show
There's light above me by the shade below.”
― Ralph Greenleaf Whittier

“I continued my explorations in a cobbled yard overlooked by broken doors and cracked windows. Pushing open a swollen door into a storeroom, I found a stream running across paving stones and a carpet of slippery green moss. My explorations took me beneath a gateway surmounted by a clock face, standing with hands fixed permanently at eleven o'clock. Beyond stood derelict stables; then the park opened up in an undulating vista, reaching all the way to a swathe of deep forest on the horizon. In the distance was the twinkle of the river that I realized must border my own land at Whitelow. The grass was knee-high and speckled with late buttercups, but I was transported by that first sight of the Delafosse estate. In its situation alone, the Croxons had chosen our new home well. I dreamed for a moment of myself and Michael making a great fortune, and no longer renting Delafosse Hall but owning every inch of it, my inheritance spinning gold from cotton. Turning back to view the Hall I took a sharp breath; it was as massive and ancient as a child's dream of a castle, the bulk of its walls carpeted in greenery, the diamond-leaded windows sparkling in picturesque stone mullions. True, the barley-twist chimneys leaned askew, and the roofs sagged beneath the weight of years, but the shell of it was magnificent. It cast a strange possessive mood upon me. I remembered Michael's irritation at the house the previous night, and his eagerness to leave. Somehow I had to entice Michael into this shared dream of a happy life here, beside me.
Determined to explore the park, I followed the nearest path. After walking through a deep wood for a good while I emerged into the sunlight by a round hill surmounted by a two-story tower. A hunting lodge, Mrs. Croxon had called it, but I thought it more a folly. It had a fantastical quality, with four miniature turrets, each topped with a verdigris-tarnished dome. Above the doorway stood a sundial drawn upon a disc representing a blazing sun. It was embellished with a script I thought might be Latin: FERREA VIRGA EST, UMBRATILIS MOTUS. I wondered whether Michael might know the meaning, or Anne's husband perhaps. As for the sundial's accuracy, the morning light was too weak to cast a line of shadow.”
― Martine Bailey, A Taste for Nightshade

“There was wonder in that insubstantial pointer; it gave me news that no clockwork could do. Time was not a fixed series of moments, it said, but something moving like a flower that grows, growing perhaps even like a flower; or traveling the minutes like the spokes of a shadowy wheel turning once a day, and perhaps going somewhere or somewhen, carrying me along with it”
― Adrian Bell, A Countryman's Spring Notebook

“It's called a Horologium Florae," Martha explained later that afternoon. She'd dug a large circle in the grass. The circle was sectioned off into twelve wedges.
"A flower clock. It was first hypothesized by a Swedish botanist in the 1700s. You plant a dozen flowers, each of them programmed to open and close at a specific hour. At the one o'clock section you plant a flower whose blooms open at one. At the two o'clock section you plant a flower whose blooms open at two. The blooms tell you what time it is. Like a sundial, only with flowers. Of course, I'll have to wait until summer to plant, but I wanted to mark out the space before the first frost."
She pointed at each section in turn: "Goatsbeard there, then morning glory, then hawkweed, then purple poppy mallow. Then, I'm sorry to say, I'll have to use lettuce- there's nothing else that will bloom at that hour. On to swamp rose mallow and marsh sowthistle. Then flameflower and hawkbit.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“It was indeed a thing of beauty, cast in bronze with a raised relief of thirty-eight different herbs on a horizontal ring. She removed a pale kid glove and ran her bare hand along its cool surface, recognizing mint for virtue, oregano for joy, lavender for devotion, hyssop to cleanse, lemon balm for wit, borage for courage, chamomile for comfort and bay for glory.”
― Kayte Nunn, The Botanist's Daughter