#spring flowers

April’s White Amaryllis Blooms

My First Amaryllis Blooms 2022

Spring has sprung!

Photo via Pixabay

Colorful Amaryllis Mosaics for Spring

Spring feeling

byCristina Barsony 

   Last year I dug the grassweeds on either side of the steps at my father’s house and established a flower bed that he could appreciate while he was sitting on the porch. One of my biggest concerns was that an old bleeding heart that my mother had planted when I was a kid had been ‘built over’ and imprisoned behind lattice when the porch was renovated. I felt awful seeing it trying to survive without enough light and very little water, so I removed the lower lattice and dug it up early in the spring.  I didn’t know if it would survive, but it did ok last summer. And this year . .

it is full sized and full of flowers! Surrounded by daffodils, iris, and bluebells, ready for another 40 years of life.

The little green dragon had a fearsome expression on its face, as it was feeling both perplexed and frustrated. It could not understand why the flowers in the box had changed colour and shape, for when it had first seen them they had looked entirely different. It had little understanding of Nature, despite being a most remarkable natural phenomenon itself, and as botany was rarely studied in the dragon’s arid homeland of faraway Patadragonia, the funny wee creature knew nothing at all about the cultivation and lifecycles of flowering plants.

And it was greatly frustrated as well… When Algy pointed with delight to some beautiful blue hyacinths in the centre of the box, the little green dragon simply frowned, for try as it might, it simply could not glow in that colour. It was happiest glowing in varying hues of green, orange or red, and it could manage yellow reasonably well, as least for a short period of time - or even a reddish kind of purple if absolutely necessary - but blue was the one colour which completely defied it.

It sighed a loud and heartfelt little-green-dragonish sigh, disturbing a large bumblebee which was happily inspecting the fragrant blue hyacinth, and as the bee buzzed away to find other attractive flowers, the dragon followed it with a resentful eye.

Algy laughed, and tried to comfort his friend. “Don’t be like that,” he said. “We can’t always glow in the all the colours we want to! Look at me… I can’t even glow at all! I’m just fluffy. Don’t try to combat Nature - just enjoy the flowers!”

“Nature” is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

[Algy is quoting the poem Nature is what we see by the 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.]        

It had been a braw week in the wild west Highlands of Scotland, albeit a wee bit on the chilly side, and Algy and his little green dragon friend had made the most of the unusually fine spring sunshine, for the weather ahead did not look so good… in fact the forecast suggested that it was about to start raining, and would then continue non-stop, in dense Scotch mist, until Wednesday of next week…

But for the moment all was bright and beautiful, and even tolerably warm at ground level, which caused the little green dragon to emit a happy orange glow as he chatted with Algy among the pretty spring flowers. As Algy looked at the primroses around them, he remembered an odd little poem by William Wordsworth, and - wondering whether his funny wee friend had ever eaten strawberries - he anticipated what he fervently hoped would be a bountiful strawberry harvest in months to come, even though he had observed that the strawberry plants in his assistants’ garden were not even thinking about flowering just yet…

Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
Pull as many as you can.
–Here are daisies, take your fill;
Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower:
Of the lofty daffodil
Make your bed, or make your bower;
Fill your lap, and fill your bosom;
Only spare the strawberry-blossom!

Primroses, the Spring may love them–
Summer knows but little of them:
Violets, a barren kind,
Withered on the ground must lie;
Daisies leave no fruit behind
When the pretty flowerets die;
Pluck them, and another year
As many will be blowing here.

God has given a kindlier power
To the favoured strawberry-flower.
Hither soon as spring is fled
You and Charles and I will walk;
Lurking berries, ripe and red,
Then will hang on every stalk,
Each within its leafy bower;
And for that promise spare the flower!

[Algy is quoting most of the poem Foresight by the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth.]

It was the first weekend of spring in the wild west Highlands of Scotland, and although it could hardly be said to be warm, even in that much coveted but rarely discovered “sheltered spot out of the wind”, Algy found the sunshine quite dazzling after the endless months of darkness.

So he tucked himself down behind another patch of daffodils, together with his little dragon friend - who was glowing so brightly with the fresh colours of spring that he almost rivalled the flowers themselves - and they spent a happy day relaxing in Algy’s assistants’ garden, discussing such profound topics as the question of why not all daffodils are yellow, while Algy’s assistants indulged in the hard labour which is the duty of all gardeners at this season of the year.

As they chatted, Algy told the little green dragon that, owing to the magic that is tumblr, the image of their rainbow dance had reached many new friends, all around the world…

And so Algy sends very special fluffy hugs to all his new followers - and, of course, to all those friends who have been following his adventures for some time - and he hopes that you will all have a chance to relax in some pleasant sunshine this weekend…

☀️ ☀️ ☀️ ☀️ ☀️

Thrilled by its encounter with the first daffodils that it had ever seen, the little green dragon begged to see more flowers. In its arid and windswept homeland of faraway Patadragonia, the strange wee creature had rarely seen a flower, and certainly nothing as beautiful as the spring flowers of the temperate northern countries.

But it was only mid-March in the wild west Highlands of Scotland: there had evidently been plenty of snowdrops earlier on, but they had all finished flowering now, and most of the crocuses which normally grew in Algy’s assistant’s lawn had been flattened by the wind and the rain. Algy was temporarily at a loss, until his assistant pointed him at a wee raised box bed by her house wall, in which she had planted a new collection of spring bulbs the previous autumn. It was full of jewel-like crocuses which were only now beginning to turn their faces to the sun. The little green dragon was so enthralled by this new discovery that he began to glow in a purple hue.

Algy laughed, and recited an old poem to his funny little friend:

They heard the South wind sighing
   A murmur of the rain;
And they knew that Earth was longing
   To see them all again.

While the snow-drops still were sleeping
   Beneath the silent sod;
They felt their new life pulsing
   Within the dark, cold clod.

Not a daffodil nor daisy
   Had dared to raise its head;
Not a fairhaired dandelion
   Peeped timid from its bed;

Though a tremor of the winter
   Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
   To greet the vernal sun.

And the sunbeams gave them welcome,
   As did the morning air—
And scattered o’er their simple robes
   Rich tints of beauty rare.

Soon a host of lovely flowers
   From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
   The crocuses were first.

[Algy is quoting most of the poem The Crocuses by the 19th century American poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.]

A snowdrop in my garden in February 2019