Just for the heck of it: photos from several months ago, that Steve just transferred to my computer as he transferred his far better snapshots of the "He Ate with Outcasts" painting I posted some days back, about which we've had discussions here (and re: which we're now very close to having some specific information for anyone wanting copies). What follows are photos Steve took on one of our afternoon walks in February:
A Japanese magnolia in full bloom at a house up the street from us.
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And another Japanese magnolia at the adjoining house, which is a school for the children whose family live in the house in the previous photo.
This is our house--a little piper who lives under the dormer at the front of the house. The picture at the head of the posting is the same piper from another angle. He/she is piping to the camellia and japonica in bloom underneath the dormer.
I have always seen the piper as a male, but the woman who owns a garden center at which we bought it told us it's a she--as are all the plants she sells.
And I suppose that goes to show you that what you see in most anything is to a certain extent determined by who you are and your own experiences in the world . . . .
We are now well past the Japanese magnolia, camellia, and japonica season, by the way. (I understand that people in some other parts of the U.S. call this magnolia simply plain magnolia, whereas we distinguish between this Japanese variety and the native magnolia, M. virginiana, with its dinner-plate-sized white blossoms of incomparable lemony fragrance. For us in the South, that's plain old magnolia. And "japonica" is evidently an old-fashioned term for flowering quince--the only term I ever heard growing up).
We're now into the season of irises and roses, and the air around our house lately has been redolent of roses. Honeysuckle and magnolias will soon follow. This is a beautiful time of year in our area, which I relinquish to the heat of summer with great reluctance. On a drive we made last week to Hot Springs, there were patches of red clover with pink primroses all interspersed which were like something dropped from paradise. (And, again, a terminological divide: the wildflower we call "primrose," Oenothera speciosa, is not what is called a primrose in the British Isles.)
We are now well past the Japanese magnolia, camellia, and japonica season, by the way. (I understand that people in some other parts of the U.S. call this magnolia simply plain magnolia, whereas we distinguish between this Japanese variety and the native magnolia, M. virginiana, with its dinner-plate-sized white blossoms of incomparable lemony fragrance. For us in the South, that's plain old magnolia. And "japonica" is evidently an old-fashioned term for flowering quince--the only term I ever heard growing up).
We're now into the season of irises and roses, and the air around our house lately has been redolent of roses. Honeysuckle and magnolias will soon follow. This is a beautiful time of year in our area, which I relinquish to the heat of summer with great reluctance. On a drive we made last week to Hot Springs, there were patches of red clover with pink primroses all interspersed which were like something dropped from paradise. (And, again, a terminological divide: the wildflower we call "primrose," Oenothera speciosa, is not what is called a primrose in the British Isles.)
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