Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Bloom Day, April 15, 2010

It's been so warm and lovely here since mid-March -- I have a garden full of blooms.  Here's a picture from the vegetable garden: lettuce gone to flower, and soon to seed.

The colder-than-normal winter we had also seems to have invigorated the roses.  My old rose 'Spice' has been blooming for a month, and it's been joined by new new rose 'Julia Child."




The Louisiana irises are blooming like mad, too.  They appreciate all the rain we got in January and February.  I like 'Clyde Redmond' and 'Black Gamecock' the best, although the latter isn't really as dark as you'd thing (or as dark as they make it out to be in the catalogs."



Finally, winner of the "Most Unexpected Survivor" award -- plain old dianthus, an unnamed variety.  They survived the winter all by themselves and responded to the freezing wet weather with an abundant crop of blooms.

5 comments:

  1. Lovely blooms--even the lettuce looks so pretty! Dianthus is pretty amazing; I've had a plant come back for several years now--growing in a pot. And believe me, our Illinois winters are much harsher than yours, so it's definitely a tough plant. Happy Bloom Day!

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  2. Roses are my favorite, such beautiful pictures. Your garden blooms are great, thanks for the tour.

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  3. The irises are stunning!

    My lettuce just sprouted in the past four days, so it's two months till bolt... unless these 80 degree days continue. Then the lettuce might go directly from sprouts to bolt without producing sweet salad leaves. Ah, the vagaries of gardening!

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  4. Dianthus are some of my favorite plants. I have several varieties (many now un-named because I lost the tags) and most of them return year after year. Try some of the scented ones like Garden Spice. Hmmmmm.

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  5. Those are beautiful irises - and flowers are rarely as black as they show them to be in the catalogs. An exception I found was Queen of the Night tulips. They really look black!

    I had a surprise dianthus too. I bought it from the annual section for some quick filler for a party that I was having. That was in 2005. They have come back every year since then!

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