Cornflower

Take it easy

    Today is, apparently, World Sauntering Day, and its purpose is to encourage us to "take it easy, smell the roses, slow down and enjoy life as opposed to rushing through it".

    The OED defines 'saunter' as to 'walk in a slow, relaxed manner', and gives another meaning, of late Middle English origin, that is 'to muse or wonder'.

    I shall try to do both today. How about you?

Good lines - the house

   

    "He stood now on the threshold of the library downstairs, looking at a bowl of coral-coloured tulips whose transparent delicacy detached itself brightly in the sober panelled room. He was grateful to the quietness that slumbered always over the house, abolishing fret as by a calm rebuke."

                 ~~~~~

 

    "For at the centre of all was always the house, that mothered the farms and accepted the homage of the garden. The house was at the heart of all things; the cycle of husbandry might revolve - tillage to growth, and growth to harvest - more necessary, more permanent, perhaps, more urgent; but like a woman gracious, humorous and dominant, the house remained quiet at the centre."

 

    From The Heir by Vita Sackville-West.

Friday flowers - some favourites

    Centaurea montana, aquilegia, and the rose Mme. Alfred Carrière.

Friday flowers - pale and interesting

Wet wood, old books and dried roses

    I'd have sworn that it was much more recently than five years ago that Narcissus poeticus or Pheasant's Eye Narcissus appeared on these pages, but apparently it is that long ago, and how time flies. I bought three bunches of these flowers for £2 each in the supermarket yesterday, which makes me wonder how much the grower makes - I'd be happy to pay more for their charm and that lovely scent.

    I didn't know until I looked it up just now that the essential oil from this narcissus is used in many perfumes including my own favourite Samsara (do you remember this rather fun post/comments?), and that led me to look for another 'review' of the fragrance to see how it would compare to the one I quoted in the perfumes post, the auditorium-filling "full, vast white floral chord". This very nice piece likens the scent to the "wet wood, old books and dried roses" of Mughal palaces, so perhaps that's why I like it.

    Incidentally, if as I do you love the idea that a fragrance can capture a place or an experience, go and read the descriptions of Christopher Brosius's perfumes at CB I Hate Perfume - e.g. To See a Flower, In the Library, Black March (inspired by a poem by Stevie Smith), Winter 1972,

Tulips in the rain, and a writer in the garden

    It is an exceptionally rainy day here today, perfect weather - in my book - for visiting a garden, which is what we did and where I snapped these tulips.

    My writer friend Sarah Salway is visiting lots of London gardens just now as part of the Chelsea Fringe, and she's documenting her visits in words and pictures over at Writer in the Garden - do pop over and follow her.

Friday flowers: Lily-of-the-valley

    "The tiny, almost bashful Lily-of-the-valley lives in shady woodland and is a miracle to come upon. Delicate, graceful and spare, like the bridesmaid to a virgin queen, its restrained display is worth crossing the country to see ... Its vanilla honey scent is by far the sweetest of any British native - a pure gift."

Sarah Raven's Wild Flowers

    Associated with the Virgin Mary, with Ostara the goddess of spring in Germanic mythology and with Maia the mother of Mercury, the flowers signify the return of happiness.

    Here is a version by Fabergé.

Liverleaf

    One last Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh flower for the week,



 and one last 'Glaswegian version': this is Anemone Hepatica by Mary Newbery Sturrock (daughter of Jessie Newbery, one of The Glasgow Girls - along with Jessie M. King, whose work we had yesterday - and friend of Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose fritillaries appeared on Wednesday).

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough

    Malus hupehensis at the RBGE.

    Apple blossom by Jessie M. King.

Snake-in-the-grass

    Snake's head fritillaries at the RBGE,

and by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Hortus custodiorum

 
   Delving in archives the other day, my mother and I took a break in the Archivists' Garden behind General Register House in Edinburgh's Princes Street.

All 57 species planted there have some significance to Scottish life and culture, whether as symbols, in folklore, or through their associations with famous Scots (for example, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Snake's Head Fritillary).

It is still a young garden, and given the coldness of the season, nothing is very far on, but later in the year - on a warmer day than the one we had - it should be a pleasant place to stop en route from the search room to the café*.

*Hours of family history research, particularly scouring the old parish records and barely legible census pages meant refreshment was much needed.

Flora's flowers

    Did you greet the dawn this morning? Wash your face in the dew?



    I was outside well before 6.00, taking in the freshness of the day, but there was no dew to be seen.



    We've had few April showers to bring on the May flowers, and the weather is still cold, but here is some of what's in bloom - no cherry blossom yet, or clematis, wisteria leaf buds are still tightly furled, and tulips all very green, but I did see a single stem of lily-of-the-valley just awaiting its moment.

    I'm re-reading Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden just now (I wrote about it here and here) and in it she refers to Botticelli's Primavera and to Flora's Feast - a movable one - "for the flowers that cover her robe and wreathe her head and neck keep their own calendar; they bloom in accordance with nature's laws, not man's." On the subject of the painting itself, she lists its various interpretations, and then goes on, "But it can also speak to us quite simply - of that moment in spring when the transparent veil of green which lies so lightly over the countryside is punctured with the brilliance of flowers for the first time ... of beginnings, awakenings."

    A good May morning to you.

The late show

    The first of the camellias has just come into flower. I thought this was the latest they have ever been, but 2010 seems to hold the record.



    By the way, have you heard about this experiment to see what type of music makes plants thrive?

Gash gold-vermilion

    Tulips from the supermarket; colours after Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Good lines - the fragrant house

   

 

    "The house shone about itself proudly.

    China bowls and glass vases held small collections of flowers from the garden: hyacinths, lily of the valley and narcissi. The smell of them, miraculous, with wax furniture polish and blue wood-smoke, went all through the rooms and in the air of the halls and stairs, too. A person might walk from a cool corridor full of the scent of lit fires into a bedroom to find the smell of damp flowers from a pot of wild violets and hot starch from the fresh sheets and flat-creased pillow cases."

From The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones.

    The passage describes the house on the last day of April; in my garden, early in that month but with everything so late this year, the best I can do are these Spring Snowflakes - pretty and slightly scented.