MinxterBLOOM

 Ida Elisabeth, by Sigrid Undset, has this to say about my reaction to flowers.

It made her green with envy to go past windows which had swelling tea-roses and bright bunches of red and white pelargoniums pressing against the panes. Marit, for instance—she had a huge green window-box full of Jacobæa lilies; in summer it was like a regular thicket of long, narrow dark green leaves arching and crossing one another, and then in autumn came the flowers, as many as twenty at the same time. . . . Ida Elisabeth felt wild with longing; she did not quite know for what, as she sat and looked at all these tall, stiff stalks with bunches of great staring red calyxes—the colour was so strange, so bright and clear, and the shape of each separate flower seemed so perfectly clean-cut and strong.

 

Sorry to have not posted earlier, due to flu and general busy-ness. The semester begins on Wednesday. In other matters, I am part of a science project involving the remediation of chicken farm exhaust by plants, namely Austree willow, Arbor viitea, Miscanthus, and Panicum (swithgrass).  Think high tech hedgerows.