Southern Spring

16 Sep '07 6:28 am

Absolutely spectacular,Jack ! I can't remember whether anyone has posted a massed display of azaleas before.What an introduction to Spring.
Dixie.

16 Sep '07 6:43 am

As I sit here completing my marking for the term, I am posting recent pics - these still from yesterdays walk. It is not the most efficient way of working, but I've pursuaded myself that I am multi-tasking.

16 Sep '07 6:44 am

Jack! Aren't you lucky, walking among these treasures!!?? Breathtaking, really! The photos "Azaleas-mauve" and "Perfection" are stunning captures/compositions! Such an adorable light on them! But the Perfection photo is a star!! These Azalea blooms are so perfectly painted by the Divine Artist!! And beautifully presented by...the human one!

Jack!! While I was posting, YOU were posting, too!! SO!! This blue beauty is NOT an Azalea, but Forget Me Not!! I was so very stupid, and a dreamer, to think of a blue Azalea! The Wisteria/Azalea duetto, just so lovely!

16 Sep '07 12:42 pm

On Saturday afternoon I sat down cross-legged and meditated about the beauty of a flower.

Hanging down from a tree next to the pumphouse at a perfect meditator's eye-level, were a pair of Wisteria trusses. As they are to me of the most perfect of flowers, I got down and studied them carefully - with and without my camera. Surprisingly the dogs didn't take too much advantage of the low position of my head, and I spent a wonderful few minutes absorbed in the wisteria flowers.

16 Sep '07 2:31 pm

Tucked away down a path near the far end of the dam, is one of our most precious Acer palmatums. I no longer know where I bought it, or what it was called. So any help will be appreciated!

Its leaves emerge as red as any purple-leaved maple, but they almost immediately start turning green, resulting in the softest and most varied of shades. All summer it is indistinguishable from a 'normal' Japanese maple, but come autumn, the darker pigment tends to again show up.

16 Sep '07 2:46 pm

Wow Jack. Amazing pix. Your maples and wisteria already in leaf and flower. here just a few buddy bits, visible only with spectacles. It's strange how everyone's spring has such different timing. I love these latest pictures, they are promises of hopeful colours in my own garden in a few weeks. Cheers.

16 Sep '07 9:45 pm

Wow, Jack!! This Wisteria of yours is fascinating!! You have for us some adorable close-ups here!! And I almost FEEL its delicate and very special scent!! No other bloom has THIS sort of Wisteria's scent!! Your Acer's photos are lovely, too!! And, yes, Wisterias bloom SO very early over there!! In Greece they always bloom in late Spring/early Summer. In Keukenhof/Holland they bloom together with the end of the Tulips, which is exactly late Springtime.

17 Sep '07 4:09 am

Jack, your photo essay was everything we have come to expect from you, beautiful and thoughtful. That blue wisteria is just amazing. I am very familiar with wisteria because it grows wild all over the southeast US, escaped from old homesites. However, it is usually a soft lavender or pink. I have never seen one with this intense blue color. Thanks for sharing your beautiful spring flora AND fauna. Phineas' pup has such an adorable and inquisitive face.

17 Sep '07 4:18 pm

Thank you all for your comments - I'm taking faster than I have time to process, but things slow down on Thursday when we close for a week's holiday.

So here are odd pics that follow through on comments. You're right, that is a lovely wisteria, Faith! It is a seed-grandchild of one my grandfather grew in Johannesburg in the post-war years. I have a vague memory of it covering the house. It was considered a particularly fine example. We have several of these plants as we did not know that it was not going to grow true to type. This is a particularly fine one, the darkest of all our plants (10 or 12) with long racemes. Another grows in a tree-like fashion, never sending out long branches. It features as the background to the witchhazel and the sprays against the sky. Its colour is not the strongest and (until last year anyway!) I would have said that the racemes are as dumpy as the plant, but it is incredibly prolific and makes the most beautiful huge felted seedpods - again, I guess because the nodes are close together and no energy is wasted on sappy growth. One of my projects is to propogate it, as it is quite unique.

The ones in the anniversary garden were grown from cuttings by a local nursery from a famed plant. They are yet to prove themselves better than the best of our own. And soon I'll post a pic of my only white wisteria to date - although I want to find more... And perhaps a picture of "my best wisteria in the world"

17 Sep '07 6:02 pm

Hi, dearest! Again, you made it!! I have never seen SO many Wisteria varieties together!! I have never known there are so many varieties!! Ok, I knew only about a tall one and a short one, and a white and a purply blue... But I never heard of one ....blooming with Wintery Hamamelis! How do you explain this ( a little more than you did)?? Which one of the two bloomers ...is not feeling well?? Or,... they both feel extra happy??But give them both a tender cuddling, anyway, because it feels SO good seeing them together!

And you posted again two stunning photos/compositions, especially the one of Wisteria against the blue sky! Instant fave! And the other one with the Banksia Rose! Spring-scented photos, both of them!

Southern Spring

Azaleas

More pics

A live garden painting!!

Wisteria

My favourite Japanese maple

Blue Wisteria Marvel!!

Well worth the wait

Odds and ends - mainly more wisteria

Wisterias, and....other lovely things!