I'd not like to be looking at orange, the colour of fire, but Cotyledon orbiculata speaks suggestively,
now in these nights where lavender clouds drift across a broad baby-blue sky.
I have caught a cocoon in my flowering gum. Wedged on its branch, with a web of fibres holding it in place, I'm hoping there'll be some magnificent butterfly.
The flowering gum quoted is on the left, and will have champagne-pink flowers soon. The sky looks tenderly gentle, but beware, for tomorrow it will break the ground beneath it with its pounding insistence.
Until then, I bear the candle-flames of this succulent as if they were nursing me.
My woofer shares a similar opinion. She says, Faisal, we'd like to get out of here, wouldn't we?
Not everything has been scratched in this thing called life. I do not believe in scratches, any more than I believe in the dead deadening. We're keeping much alive.
We are bending. We all must bend. And in our bending, there is flowering.
Isn't it gorgeous, this black Aeonium? It's in the front garden, under she-oaks, toughing it out.
It's been a peculiarly kind day, with cool breezes. We are missing, yet, some rain. It will come. The blueness above lets me out of a problem: sooner or later the thinness will fatten, and all the silver and the orange will be overwhelmed by wetness, streaming, I hope, into the life of a ground now derelict, burnt, beyond struggling.
Hello Faisal:
ReplyDeleteIt is extraordinary how often Nature demonstrates a will to survive, flourish even, against all of the odds.
The relentless heat must be so very trying and we do so hope that before long you will be rewarded with cooler temperatures and much needed rain. Today, here, in contrast the sleet continues to fall.
Your Aeoniums are marvellous. In our gardening days we did have them in containers but getting them through the winter was always something of a problem.
Kellemes hétvégét!
Hello [again]:
ReplyDeleteAs your comments, as ours, go for approval, is there any chance of disengaging the word verification which more and more is so difficult to read and which often requires several goes? What do others think? But this is only an idle thought and you must, of course, do what works best for you.
Not an idle thought, at all, Jane and Lance. These word verifications drive me up the wall. I'm about to look into it...
DeleteI think I've done it. Let me know.
DeleteHello Faisal:
DeleteYes, it works. Would that everyone would do the same!
Beautifully expressed, Faisal, as we struggle through the heat. Your Cotyledon orbiculata is lovely, and thriving. Mine has just been flattened by our woofer, but I can't be cross. It will survive and at least it isn't burnt to a crisp as so much has been in my garden. We had rain last night - I stood outside and just enjoyed being cool and wet - and this morning the burnt plants were raising their heads. I hope you get rain soon, and that your garden survives the heat.
ReplyDeleteHi Carol. It's trying, having got through the drought, to have a rainless summer. Here where I live, the ground is all sand, too.
DeleteI'm glad you could stand outside in the rain. It's the most delicious feeling.
The Cotyledons are looking better than almost anything else. I love the white/silver against the orange.
Jeg kom bare lige forbi.
ReplyDeleteGode billeder.
Tak for kigget.
Ha´ en dejlig dag.
Dear Faisal, I do love your metaphor to flowering . . . we all must bend. I think I see an arachnid near your "cocoon" which makes me think it may be something other? I wonder. Lovely to have met you virtually through Jane and Lance. Carol
ReplyDeleteThank you Carol. The bending strategy is a survival strategy! The cocoon, I fear may be empty now, and I'll never know! You too, it's lovely to say hi.
ReplyDeleteThe flowers are all so pretty I was wondering is it hard to take care of the black Aeonium? I would love to add some on my garden they look so lovely.
ReplyDeleteBroomfield Hardscape
Jazs07, no, the black Aeonium are easy as pie - not too much water, and they do best, if you're in a warm climate, with partial shade.
ReplyDelete