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Let them be Just Poppies

| Flower Roberts

We humans like our symbols.  It allows us to make the complicated simple.

An icon conjures up more than just an image.

It’s bad enough that we have done this with flags and rainbows, but leave the flowers out of it.

Poppies are just poppies.

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Papaver paconiflorum/Peony poppy/Double red

Lovely and tall with nodding buds

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and fancy fringe petals

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and shaker-top seed pods.

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Let them be just poppies;

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Not a source of opium or the cause of an addiction.

Not the crop of desperate farmers in a war-torn land far away,

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Not a field of lost souls from a foreign war long ago,

Or a magical cause of sleep sent by a wicked witch.

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They are just poppies.

Beautiful poppies.

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Nothing more.

Asiatics fill the Gap

| Flower Roberts

Here in North Carolina, the bearded iris show off in April and early May.

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The daylilies don’t swing in to action until late May.

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To fill the gap are the Asiatic Lilies.

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May is their month to shine.

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These are my daughter’s lilies.  She’s a flower, too.

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Follow the FLOWERS.

Add a Little Magic

| Flower Roberts

I love tiny plants.

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Fuchsia Rosella , Shadow Dancers

I love fairies.

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‘Star Double Pop Star’  Dianthus

I think tree roots are fascinating.

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Calibrachoa, Sun Kiss, Conga

Put them together.   It’s magic!

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The fairies like their new hang out.

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Mexican heather and Jessop

Even a toad dropped by while I was working.  (Not pictured)  Was he really a prince?

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We shall see. One never knows what may happen.  When there is magic in the garden.

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Even if it is just a little magic.

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Follow the Fairies!

 

 

Blame It On The Oaks

| Flower Roberts

Danger has come to the bunny yard.

I blame it on the oaks.

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They dropped too many acorns this year.   Millions of acorns.

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The vermin feasted and propagated.   No foraging necessary.

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Now,  there are too many little squirrels and baby chipmunks and mice.

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The snakes come for lunch. The hawks come for dinner. The owls come for a midnight snatch.

Whoooo else came in the night?

Something big and strong.  Something that bends wire and tears fences from their posts.

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I am mending my fences and locking my low windows.

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Afraid of this danger that has smelled my bunnies’ scent and wants to join the feast.

I blame it on the oaks.

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Follow the FLOWER to the root cause.

UPDATE: Tracks photo from inside the bunny yard today.

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Coyote?

 

Busy and Not Busy

| Flower Roberts

I don’t have to look to know who is Busy and who is Not Busy in the bunny yard.

Where ever I hear noise, I know I will see a blur of black fur.

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Then I must peer under things to find my barley brown bunny,

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quietly napping or watching the trees.

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Charlotte is usually on the move or moving dirt.

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Barley can be found quietly meditating.

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Usually, they only spend time together while eating

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or snuggling.

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But one day Not Busy made the mistake of napping too close to Busy during an excavation.

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Busy dug dirt and kicked it behind her.  Not Busy got dirty.

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Busy bulldozed dirt away from the excavation site.

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Not Busy began to disappear under the soil.

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Busy disappeared into the hole.

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Busy continues working. Not Busy continues meditating.

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They both stopped to pose for a picture. I think he’s smiling.

FLOWER fills in lots of holes.

Columbine and the Miners

| Flower Roberts

The flowers are delicate and complex.

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The seed pods resemble green jesters’ hats.

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The leaves…ugly, whitish and sickly.

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I hate leafminers.  I got so disgusted with them that I chopped down the infected plants.

No use feeding the enemy!     Leaf miners are larvae of a tiny fly.

The fly lays its eggs on the leaves.  The hatched larvae eat their way through the middle of the leaf’s layers.

The flowers are so beautiful,

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but the leaves look ravaged.

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No pesticides for this gardener,

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so chop chop chop.

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Little Lanterns Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis ‘Little Lanterns’

I’ll just take photos of the blooms this spring.

 

 

My Friends’ Magnolia

| Flower Roberts

Almost thirty years ago, we were given a young Bigleaf Magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla) tree from the yard of some friends.

We admired a larger one of these trees through a sky-light in their dining room.  It looked like big green umbrellas.

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Magnolia macrophylla

The Cunninghams dug up a small one for us that evening.

The tree is now over twenty feet tall.

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Last year it had its first ever bloom.

This spring it has eleven.

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Worth the wait?

You tell me.

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Wait for the FLOWER.

 

My Living Memory

| Flower Roberts

I went on the trip of my dreams last fall.

My family spent two weeks in beautiful Italy.

Everywhere we looked there was something new, unusual and exciting.

This flower stopped my in my tracks.

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Everything else fell away

the only two things in the world were me and this face.

Passion flower.

I posted it as a wordless Wednesday from Tuscany.

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Now,  I have this plant. It arrived last week, wrapped up in a box from Easy to Grow Bulbs.com.

Passiflora hybrid "Blue Crown"
Passiflora hybrid “Blue Crown”

Every year when it blooms,  I will pause and remember

that I got to have one of my dreams. I am so grateful.

FLOWER is fortunate!