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

Tag: lilies

Lilies of the Epic Kind (2 of 2)

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From The Lilies by Henry Percival Spencer:

‘Tis passing strange this life of ours,
Nought in this world can we explain;
We are helpless as the flowers
Forced into life by April rain.

What reap we for our joy and pain
Except the hour in which it lives?
He who can fathom Loss and Gain
Can tell us what the Future gives.

The Lily comes, the Lily goes….

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

“Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation to be anthropomorphic about plants, to suspect that they do it to annoy. One knows, after all, that they lead lives of their own: plant the lily bulb in the center of the bed and watch it come up under a brick near the edge; pull up a sick little bush and throw it on the compost heap, and ten to one, it will obstinately revive.”

Hello!

Here are a few more photos of my Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies — some from the previous post along with a small handful of new ones (those whose backgrounds were very cluttered in the originals), all reprocessed on black.

Thanks for taking a look!

Lilies of the Epic Kind (1 of 2)

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

“Some lilies are more vigorous than others. The June-flowering Asiatics don’t care what you do to them. They can be cut quite close to the ground and still return in full force the following year. The others seem to know they are more beautiful and expensive… and to cut them severely is to court their oblivion.”

From The Garden Triumphant: Victorian Garden Taste by David Stuart:

“You would know by the scent of the lilies that summer was here.”

The lilies in the galleries below — a variation of Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies — are not actually tiny but they’re definitely epic. The flower petals unfold to the size of the open hand of a small person (me!), and with their striking colors and textures, they make great subjects for close-up photography. The petals are quite thick and silky to the touch, and you can almost feel tiny bumps where it looks like they’ve been sprinkled with cinnamon radiating from the center.

Unlike some lilies, these blooms lasted nearly a week — which gave me plenty of time to aim a macro lens at them and try different combinations of light and different camera settings before I settled on these photos. I’ve featured them here before (see, from last year, Epic Lilies (1 of 3), Epic Lilies (2 of 3), Epic Lilies (3 of 3)), so this time I concentrated on photographing just one or two isolated blooms and getting the focus, color, and textures as accurate as they appeared to me in the garden.

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!