It’s been a wet Spring, and this seems to have lengthened the bulb season. Roses are starting to bloom, and we still have a few Narcissi and Freesias, and lots of Iris, Ixia, and Anemones. There is even one last Tulip. The Columbine are just starting, and Lily seedlings are coming up like grass in the humus-ey soil where I’ve retained the bank with old logs.
I made my vase last week, photographed the flowers, but ran out of time to post until now. The first of the California Poppies and the last of the daffodils meet with perennial Stock, Freesias, Dutch Iris, and the Black Diamond Tulips, still going. The leaves of purple sage were growing over a nearby rose so they made a nice addition of purple-green.
Each month I’ve tried to photograph the most popular flowers for bees and bumble bees. Summer was a blur of growing and harvesting which is slowing now so I can post some of them.
Soldier poppies, California poppies and some of the later perennial poppies continued into December and later and were often full of bumble bees which blended so well and buried themselves so deep they often looked like part of the flower.
A friend brought these little bottles of sake from Japan, and I’ve been dying to use them as little vases. The gold one had real gold flakes in it.
Most of my flowers this week are plants which spread themselves around without too much help given a slightly welcoming environment. There are a lot of twisty extending stems, a few herbs which have run wild, and one or two which are weeds.
This week I was attracted to bright red Rose hips next to new leaves glowing red as the sun shone through them, all against the shining dark green of older leaves.
Continue reading “Old and new – rose hips, poppies, and freesias”
Absent Gardener 