Happy flowers

Joy

Bees and hover flies pollenating the flowers, I don’t get out to deadhead them so they are going over (dying back) sooner than usual, but they are still joyously beautiful.

I didn’t realise how much the back yard meant to me ubtil this period of isolation. But I just have to look out of the back door and I see this glorious view. I haven’t taken any recent photos so I must get some before it’s too late. Have a lovely September.

Wild flowers in town

Wild flowers sewn at a local car wash a few years ago are a riot of colours and shapes now. They haven’t been cut back and each year the crop gets more varied and colourful. I hadn’t seen the yellow spikes of flowers until this year. Unusually we have had a lot of rain recently and I think that has encouraged a spurt of growth.

Cutting back Russian vine

Don’t plant this thuggish, invasive plant! We planted two of them ten years ago and they can scramble and climb forty feet or more in a season! It dies back and leaves tangled vines in the winter but it can grow tough ropey tendrils in the summer. A true triffid of a plant. Hubby was up a ladder dragging filaments of it out from underneath the shed roof and from the alleyway behind our house. It needs more work but it was exhausting for him. I’m tired and all I did was steady the ladder!

Spring

What is your favorite season of year? Why?

When Aqualegia (grannies bonnets) and Daffodils and Tulips flower. When the winter rains and frosts abate. When insects start collecting nectar and pollen and the sun rises earlier and sets later. Spring is my favourite season.

Spring refreshes the world, a fizz of flowers shoot up and cover the ground. Leaves sprout and burst from buds, trees are clothed in green again. Not the dark green of summer leaves, but the pale lime greens of new growth.

Not everyone has seasons, towards the equator the day length stays around the same length. The growing season is continuous and forests and jungles can grow to huge sizes. Unfortunately that means that loggers and farmers destroy virgin jungles by removing the trees and replacing them with palm oil plants or growing other crops such as corn and maize. This is destructive and raises the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

So my answer is that I love Spring, it helps me keep track of time. It is enchanting and beautiful. I’m glad I live somewhere that changes, even if it is only for a short time.

Grey man

Grey man,

Carved stone

Oak leaves

And acorns

Sculpted from granite

A Robin

Might peck at you

Ivy entwine you

Algae wrap you in green

Lichen inhabit you

Stone you are

Soil you may become

With age and ice

Weather and water

Till ground into a powder

You are amalgamated

And your stone face

Is incorporated

Transformed and metamorphosised

Into a real tree.