And the I'm going to be. Welcome to Snuscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep.

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Tonight I'll be reading the opening to the 1905 essay collection Old Fashioned Flowers

by Belgian author Linc.

Materlink, who lived from 1862 to 1949

was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911.

This book is an ode to flowers and springtime. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths. Old-fashioned flowers.

This morning, when I went to look at my flowers,

surrounded by their white fence, which protects them against the good cattle grazing in the field beyond.

I saw again in my mind all that blossoms in the woods, the fields, the gardens, the orangeries, and the greenhouses.

And I thought of all that we owe to the world of marvels which the bees visit.

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?

If these did not exist, if they had all been hidden from our gaze, as are probably a thousand no less fairy sites

that are all around us, but invisible to our eyes, Would our character, our faculties, our sense of the beautiful,

...