"The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature." |
- Antoine-François Prévost
More pendant linden buds ready to open. |
Enjoying the linden smell and waiting for the rain to start again, I give you a poem. The lime-tree mentioned is one of the linden's common names. The last word of the poem is the place in Germany where it was written.
Trees in the Garden by D.H. Lawrence
Ah in the thunder air
how still the trees are!
And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent
hardly looses even a last breath of perfume.
And the ghostly, creamy colored little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!
And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see;
and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue blueness of
things from the sea,
and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
how still they are together, they stand so still
in the thunder air, all strangers to one another
as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the silent garden
Lichtental
Click to enlarge this pretty pitcher plant flower. They are booming in the New Jersey pine barrens right now. |
The ones I usually see are more purple, like this. One of their common names is the purple pitcher plant. |
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Odd, right? It's not hard for me to picture them blooming below a sky full of pterodactyls. |
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The pitcher traps fill with rain. An insect that falls in is deterred from escape by downward facing hairs and eventually is digested. |
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The strange and lovely purple pitcher plant. See it now in a bog near you. |
They grow in association with a fungus that enables germination and provides nutrients to the plant. After the plant is established it provides nutrients to the fungus, in turn. |
Here's a favorite wildflower of mine, the blue flag, Iris versicolor. It grows wild in wetlands and along shorelines and has been adopted by gardeners. I saw this one growing by a fresh water ponds at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge on the New Jersey coast. Is it not stunning? I feel well rewarded for choosing that path. Click to enlarge. |