magnolia – don't confuse the narrator

no more tulips

I recently wrote a couple of posts inspired by a bunch of tulips I had bought. I talked about the personality they reveal when they are picked and subjected to the constraints of a vase, and about the way they twist and writhe in a kind of dance of death.

Unsurprisingly, those flowers have now been discarded – even I can’t live with dead flowers on the kitchen table for very many days, however interesting the photos of decay may be – and I don’t suppose there will be any more tulips to be found at the supermarket until next Christmas.
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when to stop

I’ve been looking through old files searching for poems that might be suitable to submit to a couple of competitions, as well as for a couple of projects that involve music, about which I will probably write at length at a later date.

Often, I have found numerous versions of the same poem and it isn’t always clear which is the latest, nor which is the best.
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gone to seed

Although it’s still nearly three weeks until the equinox, the meteorologists say it’s already autumn. Certainly there are plenty of fruits and berries about on trees and bushes.

As I wandered round in the sunshine yesterday, camera in hand, wondering what to take photos of, my eye was caught by the magnolia tree. More specifically, by the seed pods in various stages of development.
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looking up

I’m not sure exactly what variety the flowers in the top picture are, but I am pretty certain they belong to the campanula family.

It’s not the same variety as the ones that grew along the stone wall in the garden of my childhood home, whose flowers were much shallower – their delicate papery petals spread wide like fairy crinolines – but something about the shade of blue betrays their kinship. Those were were probably my favourite flowers; I learned the Latin name and never questioned its suitability.
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magnificent

Political commentary is a bit dry, so I’ll add this photo to brighten the page up a bit.

The tree was grown from seed and although it’s about twenty years old, it’s been kept small and is only about six foot tall. It has around ten flowers each year.

The slightly strange framing here is because the photo was taken ‘blind’ from underneath with just a phone camera.

The photo prompts me to post a fragment of a collaborative poem from a couple of years ago. I really should go back and worry it into some kind of shape, but, for the moment, these are the last few lines:
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