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, September 21, 2010

Fall Wildflowers

Wildflowers get a lot of attention in Texas during the springtime.  But I'm here to tell you, fall can be pretty spectacular too.  It's more of an up-close experience, usually.  You won't generally see the wide expanses of bright blue or red.  But there's more to wildflowers than bluebonnets and winecups.

Here's a small selection of wildflowers blooming in one small acre near Pleak, Texas.

Sensitive briar, or Mimosa pudica
Beautiful butter yellow color.
Almost like a wild melampodium.
The biggest stickerburs you ever saw.
A tiny little primrose?
Sweet little clover.
Blue flax and sensitive briar.
Threadleaf coreopsis?
Agalinis, or False Foxglove?
Dainty -- almost like a baby's breath.
Frogfruit, maybe?

3 comments:

  1. beautiful~Might the threadleaf correopsis actually be helenium/sneezeweed?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just today I found that same pale yellow bloom (2nd picture) in my garden. I was wondering if it were the yellow Pavonia I had once upon a time but I went a-Googling and it's definitely not that. I can't find it in the LBJWC plant database. It's similar to a False Foxglove but the blooms are smaller. I'll try to post about it this week.

    ReplyDelete