plants – Page 6 – don't confuse the narrator

holidays and holy days

Nowadays, most people seem to overlook Good Friday, but I thought it was an excuse to leave my desk for a while.

It’s been a glorious sunny day, but I didn’t take my camera when I went out, so rather than my usual habit of seeing things through a lens darkly, I actually looked directly at all the yellow flowers of spring: the daffodils peeking over garden walls, the primroses nestling in the uncut grass, the brighter yellow of celandines and, perhaps brightest of all, the shaggy-maned dandelions.

This lovely camellia stood out as such a different colour that I was tempted to try and capture it on my phone.

With wind and rain forecast for tomorrow, I don’t think those blossoms will last long, so I am glad I was brought up to think of Good Friday as a holiday.

spring again – again

It was a dull day in the park yesterday, but amid the grey there were a couple of brighter images: there were a few pools of daffodil yellow and the willows along by the river were gauzy with green, waiting for day or two of sunshine to turn them into a mass of caterpillar catkins.

There was also this magnificent flower which I think must be a Helleborus Orientalis hybrid, perhaps a Red Lady. I presume from the fact today is Palm Sunday it can be classified as a Lenten Rose:
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spring again

It’s a grey day and bitterly cold, but tonight is the spring equinox, which is as good an opportunity as any to post some seasonal photos and re-post a seasonal poem.
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look closer

I’m not fond of hydrangeas. They are all right when they are vivid cobalt blue, fresh from the florist, but the old plants in alkaline soils that grow into oversized heaps of wishy-washy pink mops are simply not my favourites.

And then, of course, if you leave the flower clusters on over the winter to protect the new shoots, for months on end you have nothing but a dull mess of tangled brown. At least, that’s what I have always thought.

Today, though, I looked a little closer and found the whole bush was decked in a filigree of pale lace.

As a poet, I should have remembered that it’s important to focus on details.

memory of sunshine

J M Barrie is quoted as saying:

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

I wonder if perhaps He gave us photography and the internet so those of us with poor memories could not just have their own sunflowers and blue skies on dull autumnal days, but so we could also share them with others.(And share them long after the apparently absent sun set, too.)