Sunday flowers
Just before dinner last night I was sitting in my rocking-chair on the verandah having a cup of tea, listening to the roar of the sea and watching the rain in the dusk. There was a really windy storm coming in. The surf's so loud because the waves are 20 feet high. The ocean is rough because there's a battle going on between cold air from Alaska and warm air from Hawaii.
I watched the lightning (a result of the clash of different temperatures and pressures) flash over the ocean and listened to the thunder rolling in, getting closer and louder. The weather has been like this for a couple weeks and is expected to go on like this for another week or so; rain, wind, day temps in the low 40s and nights just hovering around freezing. It's snowing in the hills east of us and we've had snow flurries and hail for a few days now.
Anyway I was thinking that I had not done a Sunday "flower post" in ages mostly because there were no flowers blooming in mid-winter. I need a break from politics regularly and Sunday used to be my Sabbath when I would focus on nice things like flowers and poetry. Fortunately Spring has sprung and finally I have some flower pics to post.
The daffodils started blooming about two weeks ago.
Daffodils in the snow.
The cherries also started blooming two weeks ago. The first time I ever saw cherries blossoms in snow was in London. It was May and a late Spring snow-storm surprised everyone. I wish I had a picture of the cherry tree outside my house in London. It seemed to float on a pond of pink petals which had fallen on the white snow beneath it.
We have not had enough snow to stick but this is what cherry blossoms in the snow look like.
Last week we bought a weeping cherry tree to plant in the front yard beside the driveway.
I will probably not live long enough to see the weeping cherry look like this. This is a very old tree.
The camellias have also started blooming.
A flowering quince - one of the first flowers to bloom in Spring. I had never seen a flowering quince until I moved here. The only quinces I ever knew were hedges with fruit. We had a quince hedge on the farm when I was a kid. Years after we moved away from the farm, my Mom was reminiscing to my sister and I about it. "Do you remember the quince hedge that grew between the kitchen door and the toilet?" she asked us. "Yes," I answered. "No," replied my sister. She was still a toddler when we left the farm. Then she added, "But how did you get a quince hedge to grow in the house?" It took us a while to realize that she had forgotten that the toilet was outside and that the quince hedge ran from the kitchen door to the outhouse. That's a family joke to this day.
Another early Spring bloomer is the acacia which is known as the wattle tree in its native Australia. We used to call it mimosa in South Africa.
A couple of weeks ago we discovered a madrone tree in the forest. We are busy clearing another acre of land of underbrush and dead white cedars (which are all dying of phyllopthera) and there was this old madrone. I was very happy because you cannot transplant madrones and have to grow them from seed. It is a magnificant tree native to the Pacific Coast. The trunks and branches are covered with red bark but, when the branches die, they turn black.
Normally madrones are tidy rounded trees but the one we found had been mis-shapen by other trees growing too close and it has long spindly branches.
Right now the madrones are all in bloom. They are not only beautiful trees but are also harvested for timber. The wood is very hard and is used for flooring. Because the trunks and branches are not straight, they cannot be cut into planks but are turned into small "tiles" used to make parqet flooring.
I watched the lightning (a result of the clash of different temperatures and pressures) flash over the ocean and listened to the thunder rolling in, getting closer and louder. The weather has been like this for a couple weeks and is expected to go on like this for another week or so; rain, wind, day temps in the low 40s and nights just hovering around freezing. It's snowing in the hills east of us and we've had snow flurries and hail for a few days now.
Anyway I was thinking that I had not done a Sunday "flower post" in ages mostly because there were no flowers blooming in mid-winter. I need a break from politics regularly and Sunday used to be my Sabbath when I would focus on nice things like flowers and poetry. Fortunately Spring has sprung and finally I have some flower pics to post.
The daffodils started blooming about two weeks ago.
Daffodils in the snow.
The cherries also started blooming two weeks ago. The first time I ever saw cherries blossoms in snow was in London. It was May and a late Spring snow-storm surprised everyone. I wish I had a picture of the cherry tree outside my house in London. It seemed to float on a pond of pink petals which had fallen on the white snow beneath it.
We have not had enough snow to stick but this is what cherry blossoms in the snow look like.
Last week we bought a weeping cherry tree to plant in the front yard beside the driveway.
I will probably not live long enough to see the weeping cherry look like this. This is a very old tree.
The camellias have also started blooming.
A flowering quince - one of the first flowers to bloom in Spring. I had never seen a flowering quince until I moved here. The only quinces I ever knew were hedges with fruit. We had a quince hedge on the farm when I was a kid. Years after we moved away from the farm, my Mom was reminiscing to my sister and I about it. "Do you remember the quince hedge that grew between the kitchen door and the toilet?" she asked us. "Yes," I answered. "No," replied my sister. She was still a toddler when we left the farm. Then she added, "But how did you get a quince hedge to grow in the house?" It took us a while to realize that she had forgotten that the toilet was outside and that the quince hedge ran from the kitchen door to the outhouse. That's a family joke to this day.
Another early Spring bloomer is the acacia which is known as the wattle tree in its native Australia. We used to call it mimosa in South Africa.
A couple of weeks ago we discovered a madrone tree in the forest. We are busy clearing another acre of land of underbrush and dead white cedars (which are all dying of phyllopthera) and there was this old madrone. I was very happy because you cannot transplant madrones and have to grow them from seed. It is a magnificant tree native to the Pacific Coast. The trunks and branches are covered with red bark but, when the branches die, they turn black.
Normally madrones are tidy rounded trees but the one we found had been mis-shapen by other trees growing too close and it has long spindly branches.
Right now the madrones are all in bloom. They are not only beautiful trees but are also harvested for timber. The wood is very hard and is used for flooring. Because the trunks and branches are not straight, they cannot be cut into planks but are turned into small "tiles" used to make parqet flooring.
posted by Joubert at 5:52 AM
The Alliance
<< Home