Camellia

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“Nothing in the world is permanent,

and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last,

but surely we’re still more foolish

not to take delight in it

while we have it.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

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“There is no “the way things are.”

Every day is different,

and you live it differently.”

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Marty Rubin

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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“If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity,

I’d be glad, but all the same I’d look at it with a colder eye.

I’d say to myself: You can look at it any time,

it doesn’t have to be today.”

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Hermann Hesse

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For The Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Temporary

Sunday Dinner: The Beauty of Tenacity

Siletz Bay, Oregon

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“Most of the things worth doing in the world
had been declared impossible
before they were done.”

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Louis D. Brandeis

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“There are times in life
when people must know when not to let go.
Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”

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Terry Pratchett

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“People can be at their most vulnerable,
but still tenacious at the same time.”

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Toni Bernhard
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Rhododendron re-blooms in October at the Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy.

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“The qualities of a successful man
are tenacity, perseverance, courage
and the will to win”

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Sunday Adelaja

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Mussels grow amid barnacles on rocks jutting up through a sandy beach on Oregon’s central coast.

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“Tenacity is the dance

within the art of opportunity”

.
Rasheed Ogunlaru

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Aging Rhododendrons regenerate with new growth at the Connie Hansen Garden.

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“NEVER GIVE UP.
No matter what is going on,
Never give up.
Develop the heart.
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart.
Be compassionate,
Not just to your friends,
But to everyone.
Be compassionate,
Work for peace.
In your heart and in the world,
Work for peace.
And I say again,
Never give up,
No matter what is going on around you.
Never give up.”

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Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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Ferns cover the exposed rock work at Cape Foulweather along Highway 101 in the coastal mountains of Oregon.

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“Beauty is seen in repetition;
keep repeating your beauty
even if your beauty is not all that beautiful,
you shall still leave a mark
and there shall come a moment
when the beauty will be seen”

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Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Fabulous Friday: Autumn Re-Blooming Iris

Iris ‘Immortality’

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Something white caught my eye as I was watering the other evening.   As if by magic, an Iris scape stood there tall and proud, its white buds glowing in the fading light.  The second bloom of our re-blooming Iris catch me by surprise each autumn.  It is hard to predict when they will appear.

Our favorite I. ‘Rosalie Figge’ sent up a scape with four buds last week.

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Iris ‘Rosalie Figgee’ blooming last week.  It is past time for me to clear up the spent Iris foliage to prepare for fall blooms.

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It re-blooms reliably through the fall, sometimes blooming into December.  But I. ‘Immortality’ is a little more rare, and we always accept her fall blooms with deep appreciation.

Just as many perennials wind down for the season, Iris will often begin to grow fresh leaves.  Their spring-time leaves are often yellowed or burned at the tip.  This is a good time to clean up the old spent foliage, if you haven’t already, and cut back their weathered leaves.

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The Iris grow well with culinary sage.  Seed heads from our garlic chives add texture. I like them very much, though I know I’d be wise to follow Eliza’s advice and deadhead more of these before the garden is overrun with chives next summer,  grown from these lovely seeds.

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A little water, and maybe a top-dressing of compost or a sprinkle of Espoma will revive their vitality.  If your Iris are a re-blooming type, this may increase your fall blossoms.  If not, you have prepared your plants for a beautiful show next spring.

This is also on my ‘to-do’ list, and so these beautiful blossoms have emerged today from less than beautiful foliage.   With cooler weather in our forecast, I will hope to accomplish this, too, before I take off for the West Coast in mid-October.

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Pineapple Sage, in its fall glory, still sends out new buds.

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Our garden is filled with light today, and alive with many pollinators feasting on the goldenrod.  They focus with such concentration as they work flower to flower, gathering nectar and pollen to feed their colonies through the long winter ahead.

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There are plenty of flowers left for our enjoyment, as well as for those nectar loving creatures who visit us.

I will head back out there shortly to make up for our lack of rain this week, with another good soaking from the hose.  It takes a lot of water to satisfy our thirsty garden, and watering allows me to see things I might otherwise miss.  It also keeps the flowers coming, and with any luck, we’ll have more Iris emerging soon.

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Fabulous Friday:  Happiness is Contagious, Let’s infect one another!

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Woodland Gnome 2017

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I’m learning to make wire sculpture trees, and this is my second attempt: ‘Oak in autumn.’  I’ll learn so much about the structure of trees through sculpting them in wire.

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Blossom XXX: Garlic Chives

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Do you fill your garden with beautiful plants, or with useful plants?  Garlic chives, Allium tuberosum, offers late summer beauty while also filling a useful niche in our very wild garden.

It has been blooming for a couple of weeks and will continue well into September; a favorite among our pollinators.  It blooms long after our other Alliums have finished for the year.

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It grows in ever expanding clumps in sun, partial sun, and even partial shade.  I bought the first few pots, years ago, in hopes its garlicky fragrance might help shield more tasty plants from grazing deer.  It was a good idea to try, and it certainly discourages them.  It offers more protection in a potted arrangement than in the open garden.

We quickly learned that this Allium reseeds prolifically.  Now, it grows in many places we never thought to plant it.  It even makes a place for itself in tiny cracks and crevices in the hardscape. Hardy to Zone 3, it easily thrives through our winters, and surprises you with its sudden and unexpected appearance each spring.

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Garlic chives spread themselves around the garden, blooming in unexpected places in late summer.

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It remains evergreen here through most of the year, only succumbing to frost for deepest winter.  Once the weather warms in spring, its leaves shoot up to greet the sun.  Which means, that if you enjoy it as a culinary herb, you have a steady supply of leaves to use fresh or dried.

This is a favorite in many Asian cuisines, and both leaves and flower buds may be enjoyed fresh or sauteed.  This Allium is native to Asia, but has traveled all around the world now and naturalized in many areas.  In fact, in some areas, particularly in Australia, it is now considered invasive.

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“Invasive” to some perhaps, but “reliable and hardy” to us.  These beautiful blossoms are what I’ve come to love most about our garlic chives.  Purely white, long lasting, and perky; these certainly brighten up our garden when it needs it most.

Now that they have had several years to spread, they create a beautiful unity and rhythm as clumps emerge randomly in many different areas.  They accent whatever grows nearby.

The clumps may be dug and divided after flowering, if you want to spread them through your garden even faster than they will spread themselves.  The dried seed heads prove interesting once the flowers have finished.  When the seeds have ripened and dried, you may break them from their stem, and simply shake them over areas where you would like garlic chives in coming years.

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And yes, you can enjoy these blossoms inside in a vase for several days.  They combine well with interesting foliage; other flowering herbs, like Basil; and with more common garden flowers.

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There is a certain satisfaction in growing edible and medicinal plants which blend in to the perennial garden.  Even better when they prove perennial, tough, and still very, very beautiful.

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Woodland Gnome 2017

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For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Structure

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Blossom XXV: Elegance

Blossom XXVI: Angel Wing Begonia

Blossom XXVII: Life 

Blossom XXVIII: Fennel 

Blossom XXIV:  Buddleia

 

 

 

Sunday Dinner: Grow

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“Patience is not the ability to wait.

Patience is to be calm no matter what happens,

constantly take action to turn it

to positive growth opportunities,

and have faith to believe

that it will all work out in the end

while you are waiting.”

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Roy T. Bennett

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Fennel

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“When life is sweet,

say thank you and celebrate.

And when life is bitter,

say thank you and grow.”

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Shauna Niequist

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“I have no right to call myself one who knows.

I was one who seeks, and I still am,

but I no longer seek in the stars or in books;

I’m beginning to hear the teachings

of my blood pulsing within me.

My story isn’t pleasant,

it’s not sweet and harmonious

like the invented stories;

it tastes of folly and bewilderment,

of madness and dream,

like the life of all people

who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

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Hermann Hesse

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“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression,

it must come completely undone.

The shell cracks, its insides come out

and everything changes.

To someone who doesn’t understand growth,

it would look like complete destruction.”

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Cynthia Occelli

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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“There is no beauty in sadness.

No honor in suffering.

No growth in fear. No relief in hate.

It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness.”

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Katerina Stoykova Klemer

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Blossom XXVIII: Fennel

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Fennel produces beautiful golden flowers.  Many different pollinators feast from these tiny blossoms.  Abundant flowers and fine foliage make this a special plant in our garden over many weeks.

Bronze fennel is particularly beautiful, and may be grown in pots with other herbs and flowers for a spectacular container garden.

Considered an herb, it in an edible hardy perennial in our garden.  Use the leaves fresh as needed, or dry for winter.

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Fennel feeds both pollinators and butterfly larvae.   Finding caterpillars devouring the plant cheers us that the next generation of swallowtail butterflies are on their way.

Plant fennel in full sun for best flowers.   It will grow quite large in good sun and soil, and may need staking after its first year.  These flowers are good enough to cut for arrangements; though we prefer to leave them sparkling in the sun, offering their nectar to whatever hungry mouth might buzz buy.  Their seeds are tasty, and may be gathered to dry for cooking through the season.

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Woodland Gnome 2017

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“Conquer the angry one by not getting angry;

conquer the wicked by goodness;

conquer the stingy by generosity,

and the liar by speaking the truth.”

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Gautama Buddha

Summer Garden: Shifting Focus

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“The beauty of that June day was almost staggering.

After the wet spring, everything that could turn green

had outdone itself in greenness

and everything that could even dream of blooming

or blossoming was in bloom and blossom.

The sunlight was a benediction.”

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Dan Simmons

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Allium

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“And so with the sunshine

and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,

just as things grow in fast movies,

I had that familiar conviction

that life was beginning over again

with the summer.”

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“There’s this magical sense of possibility

that stretches like a bridge

between June and August.

A sense that anything can happen.”

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Aimee Friedman

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Carrot flower and Coreopsis

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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Clematis

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“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

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Oscar Wilde

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For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Focus

WPC: In Focus, Or Not….

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“When I fully enter time’s swift current,

enter into the current moment

with the weight of all my attention,

I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.”

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Ann Voskamp

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“Miracles… seem to me to rest not so much upon…

healing power coming suddenly near us

from afar but upon our perceptions being made finer,

so that, for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear

what is there around us always.”

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Willa Cather

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“Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets.

Their bark sings songs of olden days

as it grows around the trunks.

And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.”

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Vera Nazarian

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“Pay attention to the intricate patterns of your existence

that you take for granted.”

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Doug Dillon

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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“Attention is a resource as abundant as sunlight.

It streams outward all day long

whether we choose to tap into it or not.

By developing conscious focus of our attention,

we learn to harness one of the greatest creative powers

available to humankind,

one that happens to be freely available

within ourselves at all times.”

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Scott Edmund Miller

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For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Focus

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

Sunday Dinner: Water Is Life

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“Brushing the clouds away from my eyes,

I see clarity in the raindrop

and beauty in the first ray of morning sun… 

Life is strange and wondrous…”

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Virginia Alison

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“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday,

it rained very hard.

I like it when it rains hard.

It sounds like white noise everywhere,

which is like silence but not empty.”

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Mark Haddon

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“The sky mingled with the Earth infinitely

in the tenderness of rain drops.”

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Meeta Ahluwalia

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“Sometimes enlightenment descends upon you

when you least expect it…”

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Dean Koontz

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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“Mist to mist, drops to drops.

For water thou art,

and unto water shalt thou return.”

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Kamand Kojouri

Fabulous Friday: Wisteria

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We pulled into the parking area below VIMS at the Gloucester Point Beach the other evening, just as the sun was setting.  We wanted to see whether that beautiful Heron might still be around, and so I hopped out with my camera to explore the nearby wetland.

I was delighted to discover a huge Wisteria vine in full bloom along the opposite bank.

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The air was fresh and salty.  We could smell the river and hear the bridge singing as vehicles drove across above us.

Otherwise, it was peaceful and silent in this beautiful place, near the beach.

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The bridge which brings us from Yorktown to Gloucester Point

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When we visited last time, leaves were just beginning to emerge.  Thin green blades were emerging among the reeds.  We never even noticed the Wisteria vines in the tangle of vegetation.  What a difference a week makes in April!  Quite suddenly, the cove was ablaze in beautiful flowers.

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We have been enjoying the Wisteria this week.  Wisteria grows wild here.  You’ll find it weaving its way through the trees in neighborhoods, along roadsides, and here beside the York River.   It just grows bigger and better each year, covering vast areas with its tenacious stems and lush green leaves.  The flowers last for a few weeks, and then they are gone until the following year.

Wisteria in bloom is one of the most fabulous sights of spring, and worth sharing with you this Friday.

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Woodland Gnome 2017

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I’ve  set an intention to find some wonderful, beautiful, and happiness inducing thing to photograph each Friday.   If you’re moved to find something Fabulous to share on Fridays as well, please tag your post “Fabulous Friday” and link your post back to mine. 

Happiness is contagious!  Let’s infect one another!

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