plants – Page 18 – don't confuse the narrator

following a star

Not quite as glorious as the marigolds, but another picture to brighten the page:

I think I’ve mentioned before that I learn things from posting on this blog. I’ve been looking at these dead plant heads for weeks (and in previous years, too) and although I’ve vaguely wondered what they are, I’ve never bothered to investigate. All I thought when I took the picture was that they were like stars against the evening sky.
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marigolds

Simply because the page is looking rather drab and I think these are absolutely glorious:

Of course, they aren’t the wild caléndulas that sprout up all over the grass in spring when we aren’t looking; these (growing in a flower border down by the piscina natural) are so startlingly vivid that I am tempted to think about planting some.

light interlude

Having very little to write about – and very little time to write – I thought a photo would brighten up the page:

This was taken by the Severn Estuary this afternoon and is, I think, typical of British summer weather where even a cloudy day can have a tremendous luminous quality.

the wayside flower (green and pleasant)

It’s a cliché, but England really is green, and I was amazed at the exuberance of the plants and wild flowers growing on untended verges. There’s a tiny blue cornflower tucked in the among the yellow and red here, and I couldn’t believe how truly blue it was. Here in Spain, they seem to come in a shade of over-washed lilac.

Still, it was a Spanish wayside that inspired this vignette:

Poppy-petal butterflies ride
at anchor on a charlock sea,
while in the depths below
ox-eyed monsters lurk.

old chestnuts

Horse chestnuts hold pale torches high
in green spread fingers and old wisteria
writhes around wrought iron
in a blue-teared cascade.
Throughout the city,
elm trees sway, scattering
indifferent confetti.

These lines have been retrieved and re-vamped from a poem called Flowers for an Easter wedding.

It was written some years ago – in Spain, which accounts for the elms, and for why it’s so out of synch with the English flowering season – and I think it was published as a three stanza piece with 15 lines.
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