Flower Memories

Many of my memories of people are cemented in as association with flowers. In the olden days, we got Mother's Day corsages for our grandmas to wear to church on Mothers Day. Grandma Getty loved softer things and we got her pink and Grandma Theresa loved brighter bolder things and we got her deep red. It was often a white carnation with accents of the color in baby roses with a matching ribbon or the carnation was the color with white baby roses. Grandpa Getty grew tiger lilies in the corner of their house and I remember standing under them and looking up at the flowers. There were those tiny white clover flowers in their lawn and we would pick them and take them in and Grandma would put them in a tiny bottle, maybe an old perfume or medicine bottle. Grandma Theresa had tall yellow flowers, Golden Glow, in the corner of the house where her rain barrel was and she would flick the water beetles off the surface and get us a dipper of cool water to drink. I don't think mother knew about that. My sister and I went rogue and abandoned the florist's book of photos to draw up our own designs for Mother's funeral flowers, shamefully abundant in yellow roses and lilies that we knew she loved. The cashier cried when she found out whose funeral it was because she would save out deliveries of flowers to Mother for last so she could go up and visit with her. We didn't know that about our mother until then. I made my sister's gardenia bouquets for her wedding and almost passed out from the fragrance in the cooler when I bent down to put some things into the big box. My friend's bridesmaid bouquets were pink roses and daisies and we all tucked Kleenex into our bouquets so they would be there when we cried during the service, but they touched the floral foam in the holders and absorbed the water and became sodden useless masses which we each discovered one at a time during the service and tried not to laugh as we caught each others' eyes.I weeded for a woman who had cancer and wasn't supposed to work outdoors due to lowered immunity from chemo and I took my toddler along to play in the grass while I worked.  She came and got him and played with him on her patio, probably totally negating the whole "stay away from germs" thing, then took me on a tour of her garden when I went to collect him and showed me her double flowering white trillium.  Dwight has the awesome crabapple that we gather under.  Enid was fond of my various magnolias and asked their names.  I dug celandine poppy and wild ginger with Katie for her yard.  Sherri and I rescued green dragons in a dramatic last dash to the development site after it was technically closed to our group.  I cleaned and spaced geraniums in the greenhouse for Ivan on my first after school job.  My high school friends went together and bought me a cyclamen plant and the "War is not healthy for children and other living things" pendant for my birthday.  My mother in law put peonies in these glass water filled globes and later gave one to me.  My friend from landscape design school decided I was a better designer than he was. so he hired me to design things for his clients and he always made me include a Rose of Sharon.  I think of him when I am surprised by their bloom in the fall.  Pat Armstrong protects her prairie smoke plants with wet newspaper when she lets us help burn her prairie garden.  My sons and I would go on the ritual skunk cabbage hunt right after our spring break trip to Arizona every year, to reassure ourselves that coming back from the warmth of the desert was not a mistake.  What flowers memories do you link to people you love?

Seeds

I give these prairie tours every fall at a farm museum and I just never know what is going to stick.  Does anyone really learn anything or is is just cheap entertainment for a day? I do this thing where I strip the seeds off a stem of yellow coneflower and let the kids pass them around to smell their minty spicy aroma.  It's a crowd control gimmick because it makes them quiet down to carefully pass the handful of seeds from palm to palm and sniff and compare assessments of what the fragrance reminds them of.
But this fall, something a little different happened.  One boy stopped me as I was about to move on the the next topic and said, "Wait, you said they were seeds.  Does that mean I could grow flowers from them?" Cautious of the pronoun and any offer of forbidden samples I might be agreeing to, I said, "Yes, these are the seeds of a plant called yellow coneflower and if whoever still has them wants to drop them on the other side of the path, maybe they will grow there."  Catching my attempt to thwart his attempts to appropriate prairie, he says "Can we take some HOME and grow them?"  Okay, HOW can I resist. I explain that we have a rule against letting kids pick things because we are going to have hundreds of schoolkids thru the tours that Friday and hundreds of members of the public thru on Sunday and we'd have nothing to show if everyone took something, and then I say that whoever wants some can line up and I'll give them a few seeds, just this once, and they can't tell.  Every single student in the group got into line, palms upturned, to take a seed head and carefully put it in their pocket.  I told them to be sure to remember to not leave the seeds in their pockets for the laundry, and to plant them in a place that was sunny when they got home or any time before spring. The young man suggests that the teacher write that in her notebook so that they will remember about the sunny location part.
We moved on to the beebalm, where I showed them how the leaves are fragrant when crushed and how there is a tiny black seed at the bottom of each tiny tube in the cluster of tubes that make up each flower.  Again, a question from the same boy, "Could we grow these too?" Internally mentally rolling my eyes at what I have unleashed in my rule breaking escapade, I cautiously answer "Well, yes, I suppose you could."  They line up again, palms open.  "Wait," says the ringleader, "How will we keep the seeds separate in our pocket?"  I ask the teacher how much paper she has and she shows me a full notebook.  I ask if each kid can have a sheet and she agrees, and I ask for one myself, tear it in half, and show them how to fold it into a tiny envelope.  Soon, I have nine kids on their knees in the grassy path, folding tiny envelopes and fishing the seeds from their pockets to put in one.  I pick a beebalm head for each for their second envelope, and we move on to talk about the birds that are eating the seeds of the tall stalks of prairie dock. 
I love those kids and I really hope at least one of them remembered to plant their seeds.  I also secretly hope the seeds of that plant spread into a nearby fencerow bed and the seeds of those plants jump the fence into a neighbor's perennial garden and the neighbor on the far side admires it and is given seeds for their own garden.  Do YOU want some prairie seeds?  I have yellow conefower and dock this year.  And I can tell you where to buy others for next spring. 

Lost Camera, Revisited

Some have kindly suggested that the loss of the camera frees me to enjoy the experience of paddling, to enjoy my hike in the woods, to enjoy the views and the flowers for their pure beauty instead of their potential as a photographic image, to experience the experience without the obligation to photograph.
While I appreciate the friendly efforts to console and cheer me, I cannot really relate to that advice.
To me, part of the joy of nature IS the joy of capturing it in a photograph. To me, there is joy in seeing a beautiful scene and in the process of deciding to frame just a certain part of it to convey a specific message. When you see, you see whole panoramas, you see objects in their situation and in their relationship to all the things around them, but in making an art image, you must edit out much of that and make a conscious choice of what to include and what to exclude. Those decisions determine what message the viewer will take away from the art. Sometimes, there is more than one message, such as the beauty of an individual tree in fall foliage, the beauty of that tree surrounded by others of different shape and color, the separate beauty of the relationship of the reddening leaves to the red rock that gives our Lake Redstone its name, the shape of the individual leaf, or even the vein pattern on part of that leaf. Sometimes, the plant covered in flower is one message and the individual flower with pollen drifted onto its leaves is another and the visiting bee, with its leg pollen sacks stuffed to overflowing is yet another. Ferns say one thing from this angle with the leaf litter under the fronds and another thing from another angle where they rise up to the sky. Lit from behind, the leaf is a glowing bright green that stuns while photographed from the same side as the light source presents a more solid earthy sheen to the surface. Photographing the nature is a way to look at it more deeply, in more detail, to explore the relationships among the parts of the natural world, and to enjoy far more about it than would be seen at first glance. Photographing, or rather the looking and the deciding what message to convey, make nature a richer experience for me and allow me to see more deeply into the relationships and more precisely into the details. Quick, how many lobes on a maple leaf? What is the back side of a white oak leaf like? Where are the legs attached to a bee's body? In taking the photographs and viewing them later, these sorts of things can be studied and learned.
Photography to me is NOT an obligation but a joy, and a way in which I experience more fully the joy that is out there in the world. It is also a reason to linger. Someone might think me a kook if I just stopped and lingered too long in front of their house to look at their magnolia tree buds or their rose shrub thorns quite closely, but if I have a camera in hand, I can inspect and peek and stare and study and no one calls the police or yells at me or send their dog after me. They just smile at the crazy camera lady and leave me be to my joyful soaking in of the details of the world.
And then there is the sharing it with you. I NEED those images to show to my kids and to my spouse and to my mom and to my sister, to email around to friends. to post on this blog, to post on Facebook, to share my story. "I went for a paddle today" is some news, yes, but accompanied with a dozen of the finest shots, it makes other people smile a little bit and hopefully inspires them to get outdoors for a paddle or a walk on a trail or even just around their neighborhood, and maybe the pictures of the things closeup makes them walk a little slower and look a little harder and notice things of beauty that might have been missed. Maybe it makes them love nature a little bit more and support the conservation efforts of some local organization or vote for the candidate who has a 'green' record.
A walk or a paddle with no camera is just me alone, but with a camera, I bring you all along and share it with you in that little way and it is not just me alone anymore but all of us loving nature and our surroundings together. Yeah, it really it that big. I need my camera!

Spring Along The James

There was a pasqueflower in the pasture behind the house. We lived between the James River and Highway 1, and that my parents oriented the house toward the highway and not the river testifies to their values, which were typical of their rural farming neighbors: Access was more important than natural beauty. In fact, the 'dump' was down by the river, a pit just high enough onto the shore ridge to never be messed up by spring high water, where we dumped anything that could not be burned. It was not even buried to hide it; it was merely an open pile on the ground. And my mother was terrified of water, certain we were going to drown, so there were strict instructions to stay away from the shore. Still, I would go for long rambling walks back there, in the thigh-high grasses and short shrubby bushes. There were occasional swales where water drained from the land and had carved down a bit into the prairie, and on the near side of one of these, there was pasqueflower. I would ramble aimlessly back there day after day when I sensed it was about the right time, looking at the ground. When I found it, with its amazing fuzzy ruffled leaves and its soft purple glowing flower, I would try to count swales and judge who far back from the river bank it was, how near to the pasture fence it was, so that I could find it again the next year, or even the next week. But those judgements were never as accurate as I wished them to be, and inevitably, it would take much more searching to find it again. In that day, the way to knowledge was the World Book Encyclopedia. If it could not be found there, it remained a mystery, and since I knew it was a pasqueflower, it must have been in some entry there, maybe under flowers or prairie or spring flowers. I remember trying to memorize its features the first time I came upon it in order to look it up, then later finding a picture that was close but not exactly how it appeared in my memory. That was my first attempt to find it again, so that I could better compare the image in the book with the real plant, and be certain of its name. It gave me hope and joy to find that little promise of spring out there, just as it does today when I see the snowdrops and winter aconites along my driveway and the skunk cabbage at the local forest preserve. Yes, I has turned cold again since my muddy foray out there last week, and yes, we could even get snow again, but at least those early plants offer the promise that whatever bad weather is yet to come, it will not last. This winter WILL give way to the frothy pink days of summer then the golden yellow days of summer!

The Ritual

This year, a friend beat me to it, announcing he'd seen skunk cabbages at the end of the first week in March, so on the way back from a morning errand, I stopped at my secret place and found them. This year, they seemed more perfect in form, mostly unblemished and strongly sculptural in the delightful twists and angles of their single 'petals'. And for the first time, I witnessed the legendary circle in the snow that proves that they do indeed generate their own heat, using oxygen at night like an animal instead of a plant to make happen chemical reactions that generate warmth enough to melt small circle of snowless ground around them. Spring is indeed on the way! Nothing can stop it now, for the skunk cabbages have made their announcement!

Flower Sex Parts

Remember you can click on the photo to make it really really big!

Yellow Daylily

Climbing Roses On A Black Metal Fence

And Suddenly It Really Is Summer

There are flowers everywhere! The daylilies on all the corporate campuses and strip malls are in full smashing bloom. The elderberries and hydrangeas make foamy white on shrubs in landscapes and wild areas. Annual flowers like petunias and geraniums and marigolds in planters and hanging baskets and beds are in beautiful bloom. Oh, shut up about the mosquitoes that are freshly abundant; we are talking about good things here.

We waited out the long dark winter and the wet cold seemingly endless spring and now, for absolutely sure, it is truly summer. Stop and smell the roses whenever you are out there, although most of them in the modern landscape have lost their fragrance in the process of being bred to favor flower size. But at least pause now and then to appreciate the brilliant floral display that is going on, and maybe, as a favor to me, walk up to some flowers and take a look at them up really close, so that you can see the texture of the petals and look at the structure of the flower and maybe even touch it. Enjoy! There are flowers everywhere and they can make any day a little more cheerful if you take the time to let them.

Flowers Make Me Happy

You can have them any time of year. You can buy a bouquet or a single stem. It is a luxury that does not cost much. A yellow rose in a tall vase. Daisy mums in a bunch in a quart jar. Alstomeria is one of the least costly cut flowers and it lasts longer than most. These were on their seventh day. Look closely at their leaf. It grows attached to the stem upside down, with the smooth protective surface down and the surface where transpiration takes place through pores facing up. So the plant twists each leaf to right it. To me, yellow flowers are the ones that make me happiest, though alstromeria are rarely available in pure yellow like this. They are nearly as lovely in rosey pink, burgundy pink, and rosy purple.

Brighten a day and bring home flowers for yourself.

Raindrops on Roses, Well, Okay, Pansies

I had a wonderful friend who was a photographer. I was in my teens and he introduced me to a number of concepts. He was my first adult cross-gender friend. As a teen girl, you might have 'boy' friends, but because they are never quite removed from the 'datable' pool, you are not quite as 'free' with them as you might be with girl friends. But he was married, a minister, and much older. Not 'datable' so more 'friendable'. He was also my first friend that was not my age. It never really occurred to me that you could have friends that were not your age. There were potential friends among people your age, and there were 'little kids' and 'old people'. But he and I became friends based on a shared hobby of photography. I traveled once with him and his family and on that trip, we photographed together. Mountain scenery, close-ups of wildflowers, people, each other, bits of strange folk culture, more scenery, more flowers. He taught me many things, technical and technique, but he also exposed me to the idea of a philosophy of art. He explained his 'rules' to me and made it clear that they were not the same as the timing-and-aperture-and-ASA sorts of technical things that were truth based, but that these things were clearly of the take-it-or-leave-it variety. He also make it clear that I ought to be developing my own artistic philosophy, a reason for doing it and rules that I would adhere to. One if his 'pet peeves', if you will allow me to use a phrase that is one of MY pet peeves, was photographers who faked things. You were not allowed to spray water on the roses or move a bug from one flower to a more perfect one or to snip off an imperfect leaf. You photographed it as you found it and if there was an imperfection, you either skipped that shot or you made it part of the photograph. So when I see a flower with a naturally occurring drop of water, be it from morning or evening dew or after a rain, I love to rush out there and capture the drops of water, smugly sure that I did not spray them there! It is my little tribute to my photographer friend and my little chance to remember the things we talked about and the special friendship that we had so many years ago and that we carried on by letter, actual hand written letter, about every year or so until he died. And yeah, it WAS his turn to write . . .

Golden?

I thought it was golden Alexander from a distance, but as I got closer, I saw that the flower umbels were too large and too flat across the top. I do not know what it is. Those who grow dill will recognize it as a member of the carrot family, along with the white Queen Anne's lace that is a frequent non-native weed of prairie gardens and prairie restorations. On close inspection, you can see that each yellow dot of the flower cluster is actually a tiny flower all on its own, with tiny yellow petals around a greenish center. From my online searching, I suspect it is a parsnip, but I cannot tell if it is the yellow version of the native purple parsnip or a yellow non-native invasive species. So while it is lovely, I do not know yet if I am happy it is out there in that particular prairie!

Shattered Rose

The day after the rain, the rose lies shattered against leaves and stems. Still, the sweet beautiful fragrance is there, and the pistils and stamens remain in the proximity of the separated petals, so it is possible, even likely, that bees and wasps and assorted pollinators will still find their way to this crushed beauty and others like it, and the flower's purpose will be fulfilled: A rose hip with seeds inside will develop from this apparent disaster and no evidence of any harm will be found. Too bad people are not as resilient in the face of unexpected disappointments. Or are we after all?

Aaahhhhhhh . . . . . . . . . . .

The First Flower of Summer

To me, spiderwort is the first prairie flower of summer. There are prairie flowers that bloom earlier, but when I see my first spiderwort of the season, I feel like summer has arrived. Spiderwort knows what is good for us, for she blooms only in the morning of a sunny day, soon turning her petals into an unattractive glob as the day heats up, encouraging us to take our prairie walk in the cooler morning. But on a rainy day, she keeps her flowers longer, rewarding us for venturing forth into the cool drizzle.

Clematis

Promise of Blackberries

It was a long winter for me. It seemed like the earth would never green again. It seemed like the snow would never go away. It seems like this meadow now white with blossom was just a few weeks ago still covered in snow! I know it was at least a couple months ago, but it does seem that once the long long winter ended, things greened up awfully fast! And now, the earth is covered with lush green and the green in many case is covered with lush color of some delicate bloom. This frothy white is the blossom of the blackberry, a bramble with thorny burgundy canes and leaflets in fives. Soon, oh, soon, if they are pollinated by wasps (can you find one in the blossoms?) and bees, these flowers will give way to luscious deep dark blue-black berries that can be picked by the handful and eaten in the field. If you are lucky enough to be there in the morning, after the sun has been fully up for an hour or so. the berries on the top will be warmed by their exposure to the sunshine, and the berries below, protected in the shade of the leaves, will be cool. You can alternate warm and cool berry and taste the delicate nuances brought out by the temperatures and know that this is the very best the earth offers to us! For now, these blossoms are hope incarnate.

It Is Gone Now

It was the first rose of the season. A white climbing rose that is in too much shade under the now-grown serviceberry tree by the back door. It needs to be moved to a sunnier location which will make my family happy since it snags jackets and heads on the way to the workshop in the garage. This pretty flower is gone now, because we had a hard drenching rain that tore off the delicate petals. But for a few short days, it was very very beautiful. Especially when the low angled afternoon light caught the white petals and turned them a soft orangy pink and gave the shadows a tinge of blue, and made the petals seem to glow from within. This rose was subtly sweetly fragrant for those willing get close enough. There are buds and there will be more roses one day soon! But this first one was sweet indeed!

Flora . . . and Fauna

Flowers with sucking bugs and spiders and spider webs and dead sucked dry bugs caught in webs remind us that there quite a bit going on out there in the pretty pretty woods. Find the fauna in these lovely floral portraits. Delight in the dead mosquito carcass. Remember you can click on a photo to have it shown large on your screen, then use your back arrow to come back here.
Spider with complex tiny web network.
The spider is behind stamens at upper right of center with its legs drawn up close to its head. Other objects are dead things caught in webbing.

Two sucking bugs, one yellow, one paler.

Spider lurking. No web, so this is apparently an attack spider.

Weevil with pollen on its back.

Fine webbing between upper ends of flower tubes with a dead bug well-encased in webbing.

Yellow Tulips