"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Category: oakland cemetery

Ten Wildflowers and Three Butterflies

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From “Wild Flowers” in Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi:

“Study a book on wild flowers… or for that matter walk out into the woods and fields, and you wonder why you go to the trouble of sowing seed, ordering plants, when the countryside is alive with flowers that are identical with or sometimes superior to their domesticated cousins.

“Wild flowers are never vulgar. [They] have an elegance and restraint to their design that ought to give the hybridists pause as they go about their work….”

Hello!

So I went exploring for a little fall color yesterday, but unsurprisingly found that it’s way too early for any of the trees to have started that transition here. Yet I was just as happy to come across a nice big batch of late-summer/early-fall blooming wildflowers … all busy attending to bees and butterflies going about their pollinating business. The galleries below include the images I took, a variety of different colored blooms followed by pictures of a particular butterfly that seemed to like posing (though not sitting still!) for the camera.

Thanks for taking a look!

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (10 of 10)

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From More Than a Rock: Essays on Art, Creativity, Photography, Nature, and Life by Guy Tal:

“The most important aspect to a project is to finish it. The most important aspect of an exploration is to engage in it. Both modes may result in a sense of accomplishment. The difference is that with projects accomplishment is conditional and dictated in advance, often by others, and these conditions may turn the work into a stressful and frustrating experience. Projects may succeed or fail. Explorations, on the other hand, are always enjoyable and successful, even if they result in no measurable and tangible outcome.”

From In Defense of Plants: An Exploration into the Wonder of Plants by Matt Candeias:

“Find a nice sized population of blooming lilies and take a seat.”

Hello!

The End Is Here!

This is the final post in my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” series. The previous posts in this series are:

Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (4 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (5 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (6 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (7 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (8 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (9 of 10)

The galleries below contain more photos of swamp lilies similar to those I uploaded for the ninth post.

What’s next? I don’t know … if you know, let me know!

🙂

Thanks for taking a look!

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (9 of 10)

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From Lilies for English Gardens by Gertrude Jekyll:

“[Remembering] that our garden Lilies come from all countries in the northern half of the temperate world, from valleys, mountains, rocky heights, and swamps, we must be prepared for the fact that their young growths pierce the ground at very different dates, and that, though no doubt each Lily in its own place comes out of the ground at the fittest season for its new growth, when we put them into our gardens we cannot suit them with the exact weather and temperature and altitude that they would expect in their own homes.”

From Notes on Lilies and Their Culture by Alexander Wallace:

“I have been through swamps in which it grew seven feet high, with from ten to twenty flowers…. You will nearly always see the old dry stalk standing about four inches from the new shoot, and anyone knowing the habits of this Lily, can dig it any time after flowering, before frost, from the old dry flower-stems. They grow most abundantly among thickly matted roots in peaty swamps, where it is almost impossible to dig them, except with a sharp hatchet and very strong spade.”

Hello!

This is the ninth of ten posts in my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” series. The previous posts in this series are:

Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (4 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (5 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (6 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (7 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (8 of 10)

These last two posts feature lilies among those generally described as swamp lilies.

You may remember them from their off-screen cameo appearances in such fine films as Swamp Thing, or possibly (or not) as the inspiration for facehugger baby-pods in any of the Alien movies.

Thanks for taking a look!