"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!

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (8 of 10)

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From Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet by Marta McDowell:

“Emily Dickinson knew her Bible from years of reading her King James, a present from her father. She quoted gardening passages from both testaments when it suited her. References to ‘Consider the lilies’ (Luke 12:27; Matthew 6:28), appear a half-dozen times in her letters, often with gifts of flowers….

“With a flair for exaggeration, she once confessed ‘the only Commandment I ever obeyed – ‘Consider the Lilies.”’’

“As summer progresses, the lilies open with fanfare. The blooms are preceded by dense tufts of green each spring that extend into green leafy stalks. Trumpet-shaped flowers return reliably year after year. Dickinson grew an array of lilies, a spectacle in the garden for weeks. There were many varieties including an alluring, unnamed ‘white one with rose-powdered petals and brown velvet stamens, far more elaborate than the simple varieties,’ plus Japanese lilies, yellow lilies, Madonna lilies, and tiger lilies.”

Hello!

This is the eighth 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)

Thanks for taking a look!

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (7 of 10)

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

“There is a school that claims to detest the scent of lilies: ‘like a funeral’ is the phrase. Personally, I don’t associate lilies with funerals, but if I did, what a way to go! No flower perfume is too strong for me. The stupendous lily bouquets that stand on our grand piano during July and August send an essence up the back stairs that finds its way into my bedroom and my dreams at night, and I am sorry for those whose senses don’t allow them to enjoy this pleasure.”

From Upstream by Mary Oliver:

“Understand from the first this certainty. Butterflies don’t write books, neither do lilies…. Which doesn’t mean they don’t know, in their own way, what they are. That they don’t know they are alive — that they don’t feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world….”

Hello!

This is the seventh of ten posts in my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” series. Like the sixth post, this one features photos taken in a section of Oakland Cemetery’s gardens with a large batch of saturated-pink and salmon-colored blooms, many of them manifesting most-excellent form.

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)

Thanks for taking a look!