“The long hot days… are soon coming to an end. Already the signs of approaching fall may be seen — the first flowers on the wild white almond-scented clematis, a brilliant red leaf here and there on the dogwood, swamp maple, and sourgum trees.
“But early September may yet show us some of the hottest days of the year, all the more wonderful for being the last true burst of summer….
“My enthusiastic admiration today centers on a quite tender canna, C. iridiflora, the iris-flowered canna of Peru. It is said to tolerate far less cold than ordinary garden cannas, which is probably why you never see it in gardens here. A quite small plant with two leaves arrived in late May, and I suspected it would take two or three years to raise it to flowering size. On the contrary, it has grown to shoulder height and is now flowering.
“An established plant reaches ten feet or so, with leaves three feet long and a foot wide. Flowers are borne on curving drooping stems at the top, and the rich coral-rose flowers, smaller than those of garden cannas, hang down. They resemble individual florets of a gladiolus, except for seeming to hang upside down.
“Three friends from England saw the plant and were only routinely polite. No fits. I have often thought the most intense pleasures of a garden are reserved for rather odd people.”
Quietly, next to the old toy drum, my grandfather tired from rehearsing his bitter life in the mill, sits and draws stick figures, then staples them to the edges of the window where he watched himself walk away two weeks after his 46th year on the line. His son learned basketball and that took him into a new language, one that took him farther from home than any work. In my grandfather’s yard, the tea roses, the necklaces of allysum, the cornflower, and the canna lilies wait in the sun, well-weeded….
And in another time, a ruddy young Bohemian, a rose in his lapel, cursed his team of horses as they pulled him and his wagon of beer barrels across the brick streets of Mt. Pleasant, Irwin, Wilkinsburg, Aspinwall, and Pittsburgh….
I am the last son. I write this.
Howdy!
This is the second of two posts featuring Canna Lilies from my garden, photos of three plants I bought in the spring called “Cannova Yellow.”
As I mentioned in the previous post — Canna Lily ‘Cannova Yellow’ (1 of 2) — these Cannas had two distinct blooming cycles, one in May and one in June, betwixt which flowers from the first batch disappeared but were then replaced by fresh ones in slightly smaller forms. Still they maintained the same “canna style” for which the plant’s flowers are well-known, and, perhaps, produced even more swatches of orange throughout their yellow petals than the first batch.
“Rather like the African Marigold, which was seen growing wild along the coast of north Africa, so Indian Shot eventually naturalised itself in Spain and Portugal. This was found to be Canna indica and was an early introduction from the West Indies towards the end of the 1560s. It may have attracted attention when Spain was earlier castanetting itself through Central America between 1511 and about 1530. The genus has about 50 species in the family of Cannaceae and is spread over tropical South and Central America and also Asia….
“When it was introduced into Britain it was considered a great rarity and it was some time before anyone understood how to cultivate it. The plant feels most comfortable growing on forest margins in moist open forest areas, but seems to be domestically quite adaptable. The word Canna comes from the Greek for ‘reed’, and indica is because of its connection with the West Indies. All the species, and now the hybrids, carry the most spectacularly coloured flowers and give a zing to any garden….
“A number of the Canna species were introduced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they were always considered specialist plants, until the idea was developed in France of using subtropical and tropical plants for summer splendour. This was pounced upon by gardeners in Britain and is a style of summer bedding still used in much municipal planting today. A mass of them blooming together looks rather like a flock of exotic parrots, and their exuberance at least cheers up what may be an otherwise dull summer.”
From “Houston Heights” by Janet Lowery in Texas in Poetry 2, edited by Billy Bob Hill:
I have decided not to forget these little houses, these tiny cottages, these small frames of brick and clapboard and stone, these roofs of silvery shingle and green tile. I have decided not to forget the pastel colors of the jaunty homes: mauve and peach, sage and lavender, pale pink and bleached periwinkle blue. Nor the smooth scallops of gingerbread peaks, the fresh white trim of picket fences, nor the spiked tips of black iron gates, the neatly groomed lawns and beds of bright flowers: pink candy impatiens and frothy azaleas, velvet-mouthed pansies, lace periwinkle, crepe canna lilies, the ragged lips of scarlet hibiscus, pots of pink begonias, pots of marigolds, pots of geraniums and portulaca….
I have decided not to forget these tiny side streets tunneling toward the tracks, the wide boulevards, the neat avenues and cracked sidewalks. Here, on the notebook page, I will remember everything….
Hello!
This is the first of two posts featuring Canna Lilies from my garden, photos of three giant-leafed beauties called “Cannova Yellow.” These Cannas are in large pots in my courtyard, where they’re happy to be the center of attention and get just the right amount of sunlight and shade. I usually swap them out for new varieties each year, though I did recently learn that you can dig them up, store them indoors, and repot them after winter’s end. Here in the Southeast, those in the ground tend to return on their own; but those in pots — like mine — often get frozen out, so maybe I’ll try this over-wintering trick just to see what happens.
I went looking for Cannas with red or orange flowers early in the spring, but came across these yellow ones, whose colors I really liked. They bloomed in two distinct cycles — one around the middle of May and one around the middle of June — each bloom lasting a couple of weeks. July’s growth seemed to hint at a third set of blooms; but as is often the case with Cannas, what looked like emerging flower shoots turned out to be new leaves. Leaves are cool though too!
This post shows the blooms from May, and the photos progress from first buds through larger blossoms, followed by tall columns of overlapping flowers at the end. I especially like the swatches of orange you can see on some of the biggest flower petals, that look like someone took a brush and dabbed them with orange paint to create some alternating color and texture.
The Canna’s flower structure tends to be very complex, usually asymmetrical — and that combined with their large size can make them challenging to photograph well. These yellows, though, seemed to present more compact, balanced proportions than varieties I’ve previously owned. See, for example, my post from last year — Canna Lily ‘Cannova Orange Shades’ — which shows how even at the earliest blooming state, those Orange Shades were more asymmetrical than these, with large flowers popping at the end of longer stems, stems that then curved and randomly folded away from the flower’s center as they aged. The individual petals on these yellow ones remained mostly upright, by contrast, until they lost their grips and flew away.
“In [John] Gerard’s time (1545-1612) lilies were certainly widely cultivated in many gardens; the most popular variety being the Madonna, L. candidum (its descriptive name was given it by Virgil), a native plant of southern Europe. This is said to have been first grown in England in 1596, though it must have been known by sight from Italian paintings many years before that. In 1596, William Shakespeare would have been thirty-two, at the height of his powers. In that year he was engaged in writing Romeo and Juliet, and the first sight of a Madonna lily must have been inspiration indeed to someone who loved and felt for plants as Shakespeare did….
“Or it may have been the martagon — the Turk’s Cap lily — which Shakespeare saw when he was a boy in Warwickshire, as there is a theory that the martagon, alone among lilies, is indigenous to England, as it is to northern Spain, Italy and Asia Minor.
“Until the last century, there were only a few types of lily cultivated in Western gardens and it is remarkable in the annals of the flower that the appearance of new varieties in Western gardens always coincides with the discovery and development of distant and little-known parts of the world.”
Up and down the garden walks Every day I watch her go, Past great clumps of nodding stalks Crowned with blushing crimson roses, Or with lilies, white as snow.
Lilacs dashing on the air Persian odors, in delight Bend and almost touch her hair; On the bough where he reposes Sings the oriole with his might….
Easter lilies crave the touch Of her carmine-tinted lips — Finer flowers by far than such As bedeck the fields immortal, Whose soft fragrance Juno sips.
Down a pink-plumed peony row Into purple iris lanes, Onward still I see her go, To a Turk’s-cap-lilied portal, Where perpetual coolness reigns….
It’s been a little over six years (six years!) since I published one of my earliest posts about learning to use Lightroom’s features, covering the software’s spot removal tool. In that post — Before and After: Red Brick with Ivy — I described using the tool to remove white spots from a simple photograph of a red brick wall framed with ivy. Then, after gaining more experience, I posted another example — Before and After: Bernadine Clematis, An Illusion — where I explained how I had learned to use it to not only remove spots, but repair damaged sections of flower petals and accurately blend their colors and textures. In both posts, I noted how time-consuming it could be to remove spots and heal blemishes, but that the work was often worth it because it noticeably improved the photos.
This kind of image cleanup has remained part of my workflow for all my images. Most of my photographs are closeups or macros of flowers and plants, taken out in the wild, where all manner of smudgies attach themselves to my subjects. Clumps of pollen, dust and debris, cobwebs, and photobombing spiders, ants, and other bugs are the most common distractors — so I use my first post-processing pass through every batch of photos to eliminate them.
These spot removal tools work like this: you use the mouse to select or brush over a spot, then release the mouse button, and Lightroom attempts to replace the spot you selected with something else from the image. What you selected is called the target, and the replacement Lightroom chose is called the source. Its choice of source, however, has always been hit-or-miss. With photos of flowers where even the smallest sections contain many different textures and colors, it would often fail to choose a source that matched in color or blended textures properly. This meant that I often had to manually reposition the source, or go over it multiple times until Lightroom provided a satisfactory match. Imagine — using some of these photographs as an example — that the raised parallel lines running down the center of individual flower petals were broken at several points after removing bugs from them — and you can visualize what happens when Lightroom selects a source improperly.
Then, in May of this year, Adobe released an enhancement to the spot removal tools called Generative Remove, which uses the AI capabilities from Adobe Firefly (see Irises on Black / Notes On Experiences (1 of 2) and Irises on Black / Notes On Experiences (2 of 2) where I wrote about Firefly) to help with the removal of unwanted objects from photographs. With this enhancement, the target-source approach I just described (and the frustration of using it) no longer applies. Instead — when you select something to remove from the image — Lightroom blends elements of your photo with what it interprets would have been behind or would have surrounded the spot you selected, if the spot hadn’t been there to begin with. Amazing, yes? Let’s look at a couple of examples!
Here are two photographs from this Turk’s Cap series, as they looked when I took them…
… where I didn’t like the mass of stems and leaves on the left side of each photo. Very distracting! In the olden days of six months ago, I would have probably just cropped them out and been content with a larger view of the flower. In neither case would I have been successful changing the image with the original spot removal tools — since for each element you try to remove, you have to manually choose something from the photo to replace it with.
With Generative Remove, however, a new kind of sorcery presents itself. Imagine now using the mouse to brush over the entire left quarter of each of these images and letting the Remove tool do its work. When I did that, here’s where I ended up…
… and here’s what’s happened. In the first photo, Lightroom has removed the stems, leaves, and flowers from the image — and filled the space by extending the stone behind the plants (which was actually there, in real life, how did it know?), and matched the stone’s textures and colors. In the second one, it has done something similar: it has removed the mass of stems and leaves behind the flower, and has created a blended background that matches the area nearby. It also adjusted the stems and leaves of the (now single-stemmed) flower, with new leaves.
While I would normally try to avoid composing pictures so changes like this would be necessary — by shifting my shooting position or zooming in closer — I framed these two like this just to see what I could do with Generative Remove. Here you can compare the images before and after I used Generative Remove by clicking on the first image and paging through.
But wait! There’s more! And this may be my favorite discovery….
Consider again this image of the spotty brick wall, that I mentioned above. With Generative Remove, I no longer have to select each individual spot and double-check that Lightroom chose an acceptable replacement before moving to the next one. Instead I can select all of the white spots one after the other (fastly!), press a single “Apply” button and go play ball with The Dog for a couple of minutes. When I return, Lightroom will have removed all the spots (I’ve tried as many as sixty) in one pass — and, in most cases, without making any mistakes matching colors and textures.
“‘Lily’ is one of the most confusing flower names, since a vast number of unrelated plants are landed with it. There are about 100 species of true Lilium, although the boundaries are much disputed by botanists….
“L. candidum, is the Madonna lily of Christianity, although it is known from the frescoes of the Minoan civilization, some 1,700 years bc. Its origins are obscure, since it was widely traded by the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions. The purity of the white of its flowers made it a great favourite for religious symbolism, and the association with the Virgin Mary became particularly strong.
“The other lily of pre-modern Europe, L. martagon, is a very different plant, its dark pink, spotted petals reflexing in a way that flowers very rarely do. Dubbed the ‘Turk’s cap’ lily after the turbans worn by the Ottomans, it was extensively cultivated in the gardens of the wealthy after its introduction in the late sixteenth century.”
I have planted lilies, but will they all grow well with me? Will they like the glitter of this north-looking hillside? Will they like the rude winds, the stir, the quick changes? Would they not have shadowy stillnesses, and peace?
All these lovely lilies, I wish that they would grow with me, No other flowers have the texture of the lilies, The heart-piercing fragrance, the newly alighted angel’s Lineal poise, and purity, and peace….
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with photographs of Turk’s Cap Lilies (Lilium martagon) from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. These lilies all grow in the same place — and have expanded their presence in the past few years — in front of a fifteen-foot tall monument marking the grave of Patrick Connely (1791-1851), about whom I could learn very little. I did, however, find a reference to his grave site with some photographs of the monument and a short bio. This page shows the monument in a nine-year-old picture — and you can see a few stems of these lilies, which now surround the monument on all sides.
“Turk’s Cap” is one of my favorite flower names, even as its use may include several different kinds of lilies and a few other flowers. It fits these flowers well, with the Turk’s Cap “feature” mirroring the shape of a turban or similar head-covering made of fabric that winds from a circle at the bottom toward the top, often giving the impression of being a spiral built from multiple layers of cloth. And the Turk’s Cap Lilies are apparently very smart — because in addition to imitating human fashion, their flower petals contain sets of dark spots or dots that (though they may appear randomly placed) are believed to guide insects toward the juicy, pollinatory parts of the flower.
The Regal Lilies in my antique bowl Reveal a song, I see them etched upon an ancient scroll With leaf and prong. A simple altar and a sculptured tomb Display their grace… I find them stitched upon an old heirloom Of fragile lace, They crown the Virgin, babe, and fireside shrine With halos bright, And in each human heart they are divine Symbols of light.
And peace they bring into an aching breast Sweet as the lilies are, so sweet the rest.
Regal lilies in a bowl Whose fragrance feeds my soul, Blend with two waxen candles Tipped with gold. And I compare The ivory pages of an open book That lay serenely there. Close by, A Buddha calmly sits With desire in his mystic eyes, He gazes at the waxen candles Because no light flames From their golden tips. All this is light to me! Born of earthly fire…
As you proceed through these photos, you may notice how I varied the lighting — from backlighting, to sunlight from above, to mostly shade, to bright sun with shady backgrounds, and finally to light filtered through nearby trees. Pause for a moment and consider how different kinds of lighting alter your perception of the flowers’ colors and shadows, but also how the texture of the flower petals looks different in each of these conditions.
