MinxterBLOOM

I found this blogger on Blotanical who writes about natural design of playgounds. I wrote about the green spirituality of playgrounds in 1994 for Sojourners. I found the article on line and include this clip:

Certain physical settings trigger a feeling of one's smallness in the cathedral of otherness. Sometimes unnerving, mostly deeply rewarding, this experience is common in nature. What is it about creation that moves the soul in two directions at once: on a dead-eye trajectory toward God and into the quiet eddies of inner space? Many people whose self-described spiritual commitments are not with conventional religion or institutions report their encounters with nature in expressly spiritual terms--commune, unity, creative, divine, healing, restorative.

                                                                                                     Puff? Blow.

 

Making and folding your own seed packets.  Like cook books -- and garden books, too -- part of the pleasure is simply imagining a garden task or opportunity.  This generous lady has a number of seed packet templates for free downloading.

 In my garden, the self-seeders are Nigella (blue shades), Feverfew, and Rose campion.  What about your exurberant progeny?

This Blotanical blogger (Lost in the Landscapes) mentioned Greenfingers. You can catch a clip of lovely Helen Mirren in classic, British gardener clobber*.  I though immediately of a PBS series lent me last year by a neighbor. 

Here is the trailer:

Rosemary & Thyme is British -- natch -- starring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris as gardening detectives Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme.  Delightful little bon mot, especially if you are too tired to hold a book. Visit the website, for details on episodes and ordering information by clicking into this "garden journal."

I fell asleep during key moments of last weeks -- and this -- week's PBS Masterpiece version of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I cannot decide if I like it or not.  More on that, perhaps, later.  I do appreciate that the filim sets nearly everthing OUTSIDE, in nature.  That truly reflects Hardy.  The scenes are gorgeous, including one of Tess on a veranda, forelorn, after telling Angel  her secret.  The stone floor is rich with tufts growing between the pavers.  I wanted to ask Tess to move aside and for the camera to zoom in and down.

"Steppables" is the post modern way to say it:  plants that grow up from the crannies and permit walking of some sort.

My favorite such scene that I lived in, circa 1991, featured Shirley poppies reseeding themselves in an old brick patio my brother helped me built.  I do toss seed and sand upon and near my current brick pathway but to date, no darling Shirley lodges and grows.  Goodness knows I have the crannies and crevices.

Catch the first episode of Tess here, conveniently arranged in "chapters."

Note:  Click into the Joseph Dougherty photo to see more information about Papaver rhoes.  I appreciate the directions on posting this photo there.  The request is for thumbnail only, unless for academic purposes.  The plant photos database at UCAL Berkeley is among the best. Don't miss the landscape subset here.  Plants in situ, which is as they should be.

but until then, this snowdrop gallery is a feast. The webmaster is a Galanthus-phile who lives, I believe in Antrim at Colesbourne.  Colesbourne Park is home to a floribundant collection of snowdrops, open to the public on many occasions. The collection was built up by members of the Elwes family. 

I always think of two literature bits when i see snowdrops.

Neil Gaiman's  Stardust father and son, Dunstan and Tristan, carry a glass snowdrop that chimes.  See this entry in Neil's journal where he remembers his "snowdrops resolutions.  I like this name more than New Year's promises.

Seamus Heaney's poem is a response to the death of his baby brother Christopher.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At ten o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram 
When I came in, and I was embarrassed 
By old men standing up to shake my hand 

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble' 
Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest, 
Away at school, as my mother held my hand 

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. 
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived 
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. 

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops 
And candles soothed the bedside I saw him 
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, 

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple. 
He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot. 
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. 

A four foot box, a foot for every year.