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

Tag: cherry blossoms

Cherry Blossoms and Dogwood Blooms

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From “Petals from Heaven” by Kobayashi Issa in The Penguin Book of Haiku by Adam L. Kern:

petals from heaven
         flurrying down it seems
oh cherry trees!

From “On Windless Days” by Miura Chora in The Penguin Book of Haiku by Adam L. Kern:

on windless days
         scattering that much more…
cherry blossoms

From “Spring Snow” in The Windbreak Pine: New and Collected Haiku 1985-2015 by Wally Swist:

spring snow —
                  an unopened bud at the end
of each branch of the dogwood

From “Down to Dark Leaf-Mold” by O. Southard in A Haiku Path by The Haiku Society of America:

Down to dark leaf-mold
         the falling dogwood-petal
                  carries its moonlight

Hello!

Here we have some photographs of cherry blossoms and dogwood blooms, taken at Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens last month. Funny that the phrase “cherry blossoms and dogwood blooms” sounds better than “cherry blooms and dogwood blossoms” — though I have no idea why. Words are just amusing like that, I guess.

Both kinds of trees were blooming bounteously — the volume of blossoms was actually quite stunning. I would’ve liked to have taken even more cherry blossom photos — but the trees had so carefully scattered spent flowers on all the surrounding sidewalks (as in the first four photos below), I kept my distance and did some zooming closeups instead. Somehow it just seemed wrong to trample on that mass of scentually intoxicating (buzzzzz!) pink petals. I also thought I might get stuck in a blossom-drift; you know, I’m quite short and they’re piled pretty high. (This may or may not be true.)

Thanks for taking a look!

Two Days with Cherry Blossoms

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From “Green River” in Poems by William Cullen Bryant:

Beautiful stream! by the village side;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen;
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still.
Lonely — save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides;
Or the simpler comes with basket and book,
For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee.
Still — save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed….

From “To Cherry-blossomes” in The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick by Robert Herrick:

Ye may simper, blush, and smile,
And perfume the aire a-while:
But (sweet things) ye must be gone;
Fruit, ye know, is comming on:
Then, Ah! Then, where is your grace,
When as Cherries come in place?

Hello!

When you live in an area with cherry trees aplenty, and they insist — as trees often do — on being photographed, it seems like your photoshoots need to include those trees. So this post features cherry blossoms from two of my recent trips to Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, toward the end of March.

I selected the first five photos from a batch I took on a seriously brighteous day. That light was a bit too harsh for my personal taste and led to some washed-out colors, though the pinks in the blossoms held up fairly well. I threw out most of the photos I’d taken from that shoot and went back on a second day when the sun was on a break, using the overcast skies and some slightly underexposed camera settings to capture more saturated colors and the level of texture I like to see.

Thanks for taking a look!

Pink on Blue (and Black)

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From “Prunus (Rosaceae)” in Garden Flora: The Natural and Cultural History of the Plants In Your Garden by Noel Kingsbury:

“Prunus (Greek for “plum”) is a woody genus of around 430 species, found throughout the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. Including some key sources of fruit and nuts — almonds, cherries, peaches, plums, apricots — the trees often combine beautiful flowers with productivity. Fossils of well-preserved Prunus flowers found in Washington State date back to the early Eocene (around 50 million years ago); the genus is thought to have evolved some 10 to 15 million years earlier, during the Paleocene….

“A very large number of other Prunus species are in cultivation, including ornamental varieties of species normally grown for fruit production…. Many of these are of eastern Asian origin and were introduced to the West during the late-19th- and early-20th-century period of intensive Asian plant hunting….”

From The Reason For Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives by Stephen Buchmann:

“Floral preferences vary widely between countries, cultures, and different historical periods…. If we travel to Japan, we find floral arrangements incorporating moss pinks among European favorites such as tulips, roses, and lavender. Japanese parks showcase the traditional sakura cherry (Prunus serrulata)…. The Japanese enjoy their centuries-old pastime of flower viewing and picnicking (called hanami) under blooming cherry trees. Spring cherry blossoms are the most popular, but the people of Japan know that every season brings blossoms worthy of admiration.”

Hello!

Some of the earliest spring — or pre-spring! — color in my neighborhood (aside from daffodil yellow; see February Daffodils and Plum Blossoms) appears on various fruit trees that show off their flashy shades of pink from mid- to late-February and continue through March and early April. While it can be a challenge to identify these trees by name, most of the early bloomers are in the Prunus genus, which includes cherry, plum, and almond trees, among others. I think the tree featured in the photos below is a Japanese cherry tree, and it’s pretty much true that wherever I look, I see these clumps of pink mixed among with the gray branches of other trees that won’t leaf-out for a few more weeks.

On a clear day, the pink looks nice against sky blue… but it also looks good if I remove the backgrounds and paint them black (as I did in the last gallery). Either way, it’s fun to stand at the base of these trees and aim a zoom lens up to get a closer look, while some of the tiniest bee pollinators zip from bloom to bloom, as little bits of pink fall to the ground and the tree seems to change its size, shape, and color even as you stand there.

Thanks for taking a look!