Wash day blues

     I have a ton of washing to do today and more than a week's worth of business shirts to iron. Unless rain stops play, I shall be out all afternoon at school sports, so duty sternly calls, but before I closet myself in the laundry, here are some 'wash day blues' (and purples), all from my parents' beautiful garden. 

     Monty Don says in his book The Sensuous Garden, which is full of stunning photographs, "blue resists definition, avoids description: the Greeks had no word for it; and in all the hundreds of references to the sky in the Bible never once is blue mentioned."

     "Birds cannot see true blue - only an oily yellow substitute. Bees see only in blue and yellow."

     "Blue evades us, is out of reach, is nowhere."

     "Why is blue the one colour with which we can label a feeling? We know exactly what having 'the blues' means, yet at the same time we can be elevated by the beauty of blue. But it will be through admiration rather than intimacy."

      "Violet is purple edging to blue and mauve is purple overloaded with red. Mix them all together in a border and you have a shimmering, shot-silk mixture."

    

     Gertrude Jekyll may have disapproved of purple as a dominant colour, but surely she'd have appreciated the glorious shades of this iris?

Comments

[Donna]

Beautiful photos to greet a new day, they are truly magnificent. I really love the third photo down, with the yellow center and just a hint of heliotrope on the petals, another masterpiece by Mother Nature. Thanks for posting Karen.

[Lisa W]

Your parents' garden must be lovely right now. It's funny, I would never claim to like purple, yet when I look my perennial beds I see that the purples and blues certainly dominate. On a separate note, my copy of Knitting Vintage Socks arrived from Amazon yesterday. What a great little book. Now I just have to decide which pattern to try first!

[Kim]

What beautiful photos Karen, I particularly like the blue poppy (I think it is anyway) is that a Welsh poppy? Blue is such a soothing colour in the garden and always looks wonderful with its green foliage - the bluebell woods in spring has to be a favourite.
Kim
Good luck with that washing.

[tara]

What gorgeous flowers this morning. Laundry is one of those very few chores that I actually do not mind.

[tara]

What gorgeous flowers this morning. Laundry is one of those very few chores that I actually do not mind.

[Peg]

Wash day here too! I wonder if you do what I do, Cornflower? I was brought up with my Mom using a wringer washer and rinse tub. So, you did the whites first; followed by the lights; followed by the darks. Of course, the water would not change in the washer or tub. Now, I use an automatic washer and fresh water for each load, but I still wash first the whites, then the lights and at last, the darks! Are some of these things so ingrained in our brains that it is just an automatic thing.
I love the fact that you included some 'blue' flowers. My Mom always put 'bluing' in the rinse water. It came in a little bottle with a cork stopper and she would pour some into the tub, swish it about with her hand and judge whether she needed more! Wash day always meant a stew or hearty soup for dinner (which we ate at noon) because the washing was done in the kitchen and the piles of unwashed laundry covered the floor! No laundry room for my Mom!

Why do the blues we "see" not match those that we photograph?

Answers on a postcard to Physicist Cat (currently under the haar in Aberdeen)

Miaow!

[Kelly]

Oh, the meconopsis (the gorgeous blue poppy) - it always makes my heart beat faster. Lucky you!

[Terence]

Is blue really the only colour we label with a feeling? I see red when I am angry, occasionally have black moods, could be teased for being green if I show my inexperience, and would be insulted to be called yellow. And - a special case - the military in the UK are purple when cooperaing together on a tri-service basis!

[Fiberjoy]

The indescribable beauty of blues!

[Peter the flautist]

Monty Don is only partially correct in his statement about bees. Unusually amongst insects they have true tri-chromatic vision. No sensitivity to red, but as well as blue-violet and yellow peaking receptors they have a third set sensitive to the near ultra-violet. The "colour" that stimulates the UV and yellow but not the blue-violet receptor is the bee equivalent of our purple.
Quite a few rather uniform yellow (to humans) flowers have striking patterns when imaged in the near ultra-violet. There is a super collection of UV photographs of flowers at Bjørn Rørslett's website (http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html)

Optical Cat

Yes, your photos are an absolute joy! Fairly lifts the spirit!