Tag Archives: flower photography

The garden is singing

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Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint. ~Picasso

The garden of circles is in its most colorful garb of the year and changes its appearance throughout the day as the light shifts and turns. downstepsjuly

Morning light brings an inner glow to new blooms, a luminescence seen at no other time of day and ephemeral in its passing. sweetcharlotte

Evening lights up the hillside and creates shadows around the arbor gateway. upsteps

People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and its ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. ~ Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

I’ve been experimenting with color themes for all of my years as a gardener, laying one color against another to create a gentle moment or a raucous party.  July is the month of daylily bloom and the endless choice of flower color, patterns and shapes of the hemerocallis clan provides an opportunity to make visual music in the garden.

Sometimes the colors between two flowers are tender and lyrical, creating an evocative melody. (click on any image in the mosaic to see a full size photo)

Pink balloon flower
Daylily ‘Secret Splendor’
Rose ‘Pink Carpet’
Daylily ‘Janice Brown’

Sometimes the darker tones rule, dramatic, mysterioso. “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” ~Claude Monet

Daylillies ‘Eggplant Ecstasy’ and ‘Velvet Shadows’
Astilbe ‘Chocolate Shogun’
Daylily ‘Persian Ruby’
Daylily ‘Cinderella’s Dark Side’
Daylily ‘Nosferatu’ and Echinacea ‘Ruby Star’
Echinacea ‘Ruby Star’
Daylily ‘Her Majesty’s Wizard’
Daylily ‘UFO’ and Coleus ‘Religious Radish’

I drink purple in the morning and read on lime green.  I sleep in smoky blues beneath burnt orange, and I eat in a yellow afterglow. My home is filled with the conversations of color. . .  ~Ketzel Levine

What happens when purple meets yellow? Zing! or perhaps Sing! The grape and lemonade bed is in full chorus.

Daylily ‘Diabolique’
Daylily ‘Etched Eyes’
Daylily ‘Etched Eyes’ and Coleus ‘Gay’s Delight’
Grape and Lemonade bed vignette
Grape and Lemonade bed
Daylily ‘Mokan Butterfly’
Daylily ‘Vampire LeStat’ and Coleus ‘Gay’s Delight’

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.  ~Kahlil Gibran

peachblue

The peach and blue bed

Peach has always seemed to me as sweet as pink but with a little more attitude. Combine it with blue for even more pizazz, a romantic pas de deux.

Daylily ‘Full Moon Magic’
Daylily ‘Desert Dreams’
Daylily ‘Francis Joiner’

The new rock walls on the hillside are filling in nicely. hillsidefromdeck

Plants displaced during its construction have settled in and are making lovely warm color combinations that subtly change each morning as the daylily blooms reconfigure themselves.

Daylily ‘Two To Tango’
Daylily ‘Breed Apart’
Daylillies at rock wall
Hot colored hill
Coleus ‘Sedona’ with orange pansy
Daylillies ‘Scarlet’s Web’ and ‘Fairy Firecracker’
Looking down the hillside

Each evening, Angel and I tour the garden, then go up the steps to the house for one more look. angelonsteps

The view from the upper deck reveals the theme of circles in the garden, a visual rondo.

May your summer sing with the sounds and sights of joyful color.

Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. ~Kandinsky

Perfect young summer

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What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade. ~Gertrude Jekyll

Summer is truly here, the solstice bringing long days of light along with copious rain and heat. The last of the May flowers are finished, and early June has suddenly pirouetted into young summer. The garden burgeons with lush green growth.June garden circles

Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.     ~Pablo Neruda

Our native Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ threatens to swallow the bench at the bottom of the garden, drinking long and hard of the rain brought by frequent thunderstorms.

<em>Hydrangea arborescens</em> 'Annabelle'

<em>Hydrangea</em> fairy

Always generous with her blooms, ‘Annabelle’ generously provides a few clever nests for the leafier moth  (Olethreutes ferriferana) – there are plenty of leaves and blooms to spare.

Long trails of Italian clematis clamber and flow along fences, down shrubs and across other perennials while the perennial residents of pots rise up to meet them. (Click on any photo in the mosaic to see a larger image.)

The daylilies are beginning to flower. A stand of ‘Lynn’s Delight’ was given to me by a friend years ago and and is the first to blossom each June; black annual poppies are poised to bloom in tandem.

‘Lynn’s Delight’
Hemerocallis‘Lynn’s Delight’

Every day, new daylilies open amid the roses, bringing a surprise of color to each morning walk.

True lilies continue the show throughout the garden; one of my favorites is the soft peach down-facing ‘Tiger Babies’. The peach theme continues with roses.

On this June day, the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers.     ~Francis King

The grape and lemonade bed is moving into its glory of lemon yellows and deep purples.

June is almost over yet the freshness of young summerJune hilltop with yellow foxglovefilled with blue skies,June skies

lush blooms, June hillside

and rich greens Hostas and ferns at woodland edgecontinues to enchant. May you enjoy the final days of a lovely June and celebrate the entrance of the fireworks of July.

And since all this loveliness cannot be Heaven, I know in my heart it is June.  ~Abba Woolson

(All images ©2017 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved)

 

An instrument of grace

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Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature is a help. Gardening is our instrument of grace.  ~May Sarton

Each morning this week began with a stroll through the garden. Under blue skies and surrounded by the peace of the green woods, there was so much to see. Time to put away the troubles of the world and enter the sanctuary of nature for a moment of grace. Won’t you join me on my walk this morning?

The upper garden is in its final moment of glory. Alliums, foxglove, iris and peonies create a spectacle of color and shape.

lateMayherbcircle

Peony ‘Krinkled White’ is always generous with her blooms and shrugs off the rains that drop other peonies to the ground. (Click on any photo in the mosaic to see a full-size image)

Peony ‘Krinkled White’ with foxgloves
White on white
‘Krinkled White’ stands up in the rain

Allium christophii sparkles near the self-seeded ‘Foxy’ foxgloves. alliumfoxglove

If you long for a mind at rest and a heart that cannot harden, go find a gate that opens wide into a secret garden. ~Unknown

The garden gate beckons us to enter. gardengate

The warmth and rain of the last two weeks has triggered lush and abundant growth.

View from the chair
Penstemon ‘Dark Towers’
The chair at the top of the hill
Perennial foxglove (Digitalis lutea)
Bees love foxgloves
Rose ‘Margo Koster’ and Spirea ‘Magic Carpet’
Rose ‘Margo Koster’

Summer has already come to the lower garden, peonies and iris giving way to roses and clematis. Hybrid musk rose ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ climbs the fence and creeps into the mulberry tree. Her simple white blossoms are sweetly fragrant, attracting pollinators and scenting the lower garden.

Rose ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ climbing the fence into the mulberry tree
Rose ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ blossom
Clematis vitacella venosa violacea
Clematis vitacella ‘Etoille Violette’

As I walk along the crunchy gravel paths, I see crowds of bumblebees visiting blooms, filling their pollen sacs with golden goodness.

Bumblebee in Lamium
Bumblebees with pollen sacs on Spirea ‘Goldflame’
Bumblebee on Spirea blossom

The ninebark ‘Diablo’ in the Plum & Pewter bed is festooned with Clematis ‘Margo Koster’ and the patio rose ‘Sweet Charlotte’ has burst into bloom. A single five petal blossom adorns the species rose Rosa rubrifolia, treasured for its smoky foliage color.

Plum and Pewter bed
Rose ‘Sweet Chariot’
Rosa rubrifolia
Clematis vitacella ‘Margo Koster’

The apricot roses are out in force, showing off with the purple fireworks of Allium christophii. A firefly rests on a silvery gray lamb’s ear stalk nearby, no doubt gathering energy for tonight’s show of lights.

English Rose ‘Ambridge Rose’
English rose ‘Abraham Darby’
Firefly
Unknown peach rose
Buck rose ‘Winter Sunset’
Rose ‘Ambridge Rose’ with Allium christophii

Several bushes of ‘Rose de Rescht’ bloom along the curving path and fill the air with the intoxicating scent of old roses; many buds promise weeks of bloom.

Rose de Rescht
Roses along the path
English Rose ‘Queen of Sweden’
Geranium ‘Biokova’

As I approach the arbor that leads to the woods, I am stopped in my tracks by the profusion of rose ‘Complicata’ climbing its rungs. The clusters of large single blossoms carry a sweet light scent and will provide orange rose hips in the fall. When I turn around to view the garden through the arbor, I see that Angel has joined me on the garden stroll.

Looking through the arbor
Rose ‘Complicata’
Rose ‘Complicata’
Pink peony and bleeding heart ‘Goldheart’
Angel in the garden
Angel and peony

I hope you enjoyed walking with me through the garden, where each journey leads to new discoveries. May you savor the slow circles of nature and find grace therein.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.  ~John Muir

 

Of flowers and light

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“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” ~Theodore Roethke

As earth spirals towards the summer solstice, each day begins earlier and seems filled with more light. The growing crescendo of flowers opening in the garden somehow captures and reflects that light even more.

Allium 'Everest' against beauty bush

Each day brings new change as buds become flowers . . .

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and garden scenes shift their colors as new blooms open and others begin to fade.

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When I first began to study photography, I was deeply influenced by a line from the book The Art of Seeing – “Only light, not things, strike the retina.”  The objects we think we see are in reality spectrums of light reflected back to us. That realization changed the way I saw the world and the way that I tried to capture it with my camera. In the garden, light is everything. Plants respond to it, live by it, reach for it, and reflect it.

Deutzia ‘Chardonnay Pearls’ blossoms
Deutzia ‘Chardonnay Pearls’
English bluebells
Geranium phaeum alba
Columbine

What we see as color is actually the reflection of a particular wavelength of light. Happily, color in nature is never just one shade or tone, but instead a complex reflection that challenges and seduces our eyes with both boldness and nuance.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Geum ‘Mai Tai’ and daffodil ‘Blushing Lady’
Columbine
Clematis ‘Multiblue’
Clematis ‘Asao’
Peony ‘Coral and Gold’

The garden unfolds in the growing light, rich and full of promise, and extends an invitation to step over the threshold and wander the paths.

A gateway to the woods
Playground for the birds
My sweet garden “Angel”
The hillside

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. ~William Wordsworth

hrbMayvert

Enjoy the loveliness of May and may you treasure the light that grows each day.

“I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.” ~Edward Steichen, photographer

Composing about light: The Four Elements: Light

Anticipation

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The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size. ~Gertrude S. Wister

Winter comes and goes these days. February has embraced all of the seasons in a few short weeks, from bitter winter to balmy summer. Earlier in the month, January’s snow melted into the ground and a thick fog rose overnight, transforming the woodland into a mysterious world of gray and black.  forestfog

Later, the sun appeared and burned away the blanket of fog, revealing the bold architecture of oak trees stark against a bright blue sky. (Click on any photo to enlarge)

Bench in fog
Sun touching the foggy garden
Oak trees against February sky

Temperatures continued to warm last week until many early flowers burst into full bloom while shrubs and trees began to swell with buds and leaves. The black and white and gray of winter was suddenly sparked with color.

Iris reticulata ‘Harmony’
‘Harmony’ closeup
Forsythia buds
Snowdrops emerging
Snowdrops open
Tommy crocus (Crocus tommasinianus)
White forsythia (Abeliophyllum distichum)

More hellebore (Helleborus orientalis) flowers open each day, a few weeks earlier than usual. Many have self-seeded and spread under trees and shrubs; a few are named varieties. A favorite is the almost black double flowered ‘Onyx Odyssey’. The unusual green flowers and uniquely patterned foliage of the fetid hellebore (Helleborus foetidus) punctuate the edge of the woodlands.

Clump of rose hellebores
Green flower of Helleborus foetidus
Rose hellebore
Leaf pattern of Helleborus foetidus
Hellebore ‘Onyx Odyssey’
Petal backs of rose hellebore

The temperatures have plunged once again and gardeners can only hope that the early growth won’t be damaged by the return of winter. But the anticipation of spring has begun. (Click on any photo for a full size version; all photos ©2017 Lynn Emberg Purse)

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle … a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream. ~ Barbara Winkler