ABC Wednesday
and the letter this week is the Royal R

R is for Roses

My favourites are the Abraham Darby for colour, form and fragrance

the Mister Lincoln for its amazing deep red velvet colour and texture, and the wonderful scent that fills the air as you brush past it

and the Prairie Princess for its lovely icy pink hardiness.

For more delightful R's. or perhaps some not as delightful, click here
to visit ABC Wednesday with thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and her Rowdy crew.

Monday, May 13th, 2012

The whole town is awash with lilacs, 

and up the streets and down the lanes great bushes 

 scent the entire village with this glorious iconic fragrance

that marks the middle of May.

I miss the creamy white blossoms of the Philadelphia Orange. and its sweet, tangy fragrance,

but I am so glad to have lilacs again in this town garden.

They are complemented by the virginal clusters on the Mountain Ash

and it is so lovely to sit in the back garden and listen to the green grass growing

and breath the heady perfume of spring.

Amy Lowell speaks of the universality of  the lilac -
"the great flood of our souls, bursting above the leaf-shape of our hearts,"
In excerpts from her poem "Lilacs" she says

"Your great puffs of flowers
are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
above a cellar dug unto a hill.
You are everywhere."

and again.......


"Lilacs...
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms."

Beautiful!!!!

What a contented week-end we had, working in the garden.
The sun shone, the breeze was cool, but not chilly,
the bleeding heart and the peonies and coral bells
that came with us into town are catching up to their village buddies
who were well established and quite at home when we came here.

All is right in this small corner of the world...