The Flowers of Summer

The Flowers of Summer

 

Here, with my pictures are some terrific quotes I found online, on the site, http://www.quotegarden.com/flowers.html

 

 

My Garden in Flower

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed. ~Walt Whitman

How can one help shivering with delight when one's hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower, cool from the shade and stiff with newborn vigor! ~Colette

 

 

 

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~Emma Goldman

The poet's darling. ~William Wordsworth, "To the Daisy"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cactus in Flower

 

 

 

 

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

 

A flower's appeal is in its contradictions — so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect. ~Terri Guillemets

The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days. ~Robert Leighton

Roadsides in Flower

 

Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler's dower.
~William Allingham

 

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

 

 

 

 

 

Flowers are those little colorful beacons of the sun from which we get sunshine when dark, somber skies blanket our thoughts. Dodinski

A June Walk: sights, scents and sounds

A June Walk: sights, scents and sounds

 

I come out of the back door and I’m joyously surprised by the sight of two flowers on top of one of my cactuses. They will only flower for a day, but at night they have a wonderful scent. It’s early and windy. The island is living up to its name of ‘The Windy Isle’. I walk out of our gate and breathe in a different scent, it the honeysuckle that is on tope of the wall.

 Then up the road that takes me along the shore line. The sun is now up and over the hills and reaching the fields touching the ripening grasses which are now glowing and golden. I pass one of the early morning Lemnian walkers and we greet each other, ‘Kalli Mera’.

 

The early flowers have finished. There are some small malva and just the odd poppy, but now other flowers are blooming. Huge Verbascum are flowering along the road edges. This plant is also called Mullein.

There are so many types of grasses, now seeding. The wind runs through them bending them like waves at sea. Takis would not like to see this as he suffers from hay fever. And I too see some of my most hated bindweed flowering. But I overlook my dislike as these plants are not in my garden.

I’m also impressed by the Alcea pallida, also called the Turkish Wild Hollyhock, tall with large pink flowers. And I listen to the small birds chattering as they enjoy the harvest of seeding plants in the nearby field.

Oleanders are in bloom in gardens and where they have been planted along the side of one road. There are stands of dry sorrel heads and opening heads of cow parsley that I must pick and bring into the house. They make such a light airy with the addition of a few other wild flowers.

I hear a motorbike coming down the road. It is heading off to a small harbour where local fishermen keep their boats. Then coming down the road I stop and greet two hikers. They ask me if I’m a local and as we get talking I find out they are from the Isle of Wight. I’m delighted as this is the English island where my grandparents retired and I went for summer holidays as a child.

I can’t yet see any squirting cucumbers flowering or seeding. When the fruit forms if ripe and you touch it sticky seeds quirt out.  Down near my feet on the verge are small blue flowers and grasses, and a rabbit hops away to hide in the tall grass. And away ahead is the sea, and a holiday village where I can hear the thump of tennis racket and ball.

I gather a bunch of grasses, everlastings and cow parsley, and some of that tall blue flower I can’t name and return home.

June Greening

        June Greening

June grasses are golden

 



Our cherry tree late April



Cherry tree in June (only one cherry though! Perhaps more next year.)

 

 

 

 

 

 



June and the roadside trees are sprouting at last

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alkinoos’ Garden

From The Odyssey, book v111   Homer, 9th century B.C.

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

 

To left and right, outside, he saw an orchard

closed by a pale – four spacious acres planted

With trees in bloom or weighted down for picking:

pear trees, pomegranates, brilliant apples,

luscious figs, and olives ripe and dark.

 

 



The greening in our Vegetable Garden

After the vines came rows of vegetables

of all the kinds that flourish in every season,

and through the garden plots and orchard ran

channels from one clear fountain, while another

rushed through apipe under the courtyard entrance

to serve the house and all who came for water.

 

These were the gifts of heaven to Alkinoos.  

 

Quoted from Greece In Poetry, edited by Simoni Zafiropoulos

 

An April Walk on Lemnos

An April Walk on Lemnos

Things look very different here from summertime. The mountains are very green and many trees are still leafless. The locals are wearing overcoats as, though it is sometimes sunny, the wind is still coming from Russia.

 
 

The streets are empty. This will surprise those who only visit in July and August when you can hardly pass through these streets because of the throng of cars and people. A few shops have not opened and some have closed down. This may be because of the economic situation which is not good for all of Greece, and has hit Lemnos too. Many are worried about what the government will do next for nothing is decided yet. I would guess that Greece will stay in the EU but there still is the possibility they will leave and the country will go back to the drachma so there is a lot of uncertainty.

 

But there is some movement. in and around the town A new supermarket is being built and should be ready by summer. And on my way back from my walk 30 young English workers walked past me on their way to begin preparing a holiday centre for the early summer visitors. This hotel complex offers a great number of sports and so it opens earlier and stays open longer than those just relying on the summer sun.



The local gardeners have tilled and pruned their grapes, and planted lines of promising young vegetables.


Deep in the grass are many small flowers, many reminding me of flowers I knew as a girl, walking through the English country side, one looks like ragged robin, and another like the malows I remember. Plus the statice is in bloom, the plant that the locals make into wreaths to decorate their doors for May Day.

 

Many roadside trees have been pruned until they look dead, but have just a few green sprouts. . Amazingly by summer these will be in full leaf and shading the road. The mulberry trees have no leaves but are covered with their flowering tassels and here and there are a self sown apple trees in full bloom.

A patchwork of colours and textures.

 

I walked to the next bay, where I could see further down the coast. The beachside smothered with purple flowers, and the sand dunes dotted with poppies.

Along the roadsides the grass is high, knee high for these donkeys. These three belong to the local priest and ‘mow’ the grass in empty paddocks.