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.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

At the Cockrell Butterfly Center

Waiting on the vaunted Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) to bloom.  Nothing yet, but the horticulturists are getting out the big guns: rotting bananas.  Perhaps the ethylene will cause Lois to finally burst into stinky flower!  Until then, there's the butterflies:


 





(Butterflies with numbers on the wing are part of a study.  A steady-handed researcher writes the numbers just before releasing them into the garden.)

3 comments:

  1. Wouldn't you just love to see such a variety of butterflies in your garden? Beautiful heavenly creatures.

    Thank you for visitng This Grandmothers Garden... I've actually seen my baby chickadees in flight school in my gardens!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a wonderful variety of butterflies!

    I can't believe you mentioned the corpse flower! I unknowingly recently acquired one of these plants. My July 16th post featured amorphophallus konjac, the particular variety I have, which is a smaller cousin to titanum, but just as smelly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Elizabeth,

    What great shots of such pretties! And so different from the ones we see here!Good luck with the Corpse Flower. Will surely stop by to see your post on it.

    Have a great day!

    ReplyDelete