Monday, June 13, 2011

Daylilies and inadvertent poems

HP is in a fairly fragile state, now okay, now not so okay, and the energy it takes to organize thought and talk is a lot for him. But now and then he accidentally comes out with what amounts to a little poem, though he is unaware that it is.

Yesterday he was looking at a book of Turner watercolors, and suddenly said

I looked for a red hummingbird
No
I thought I would see a red hummingbird
But no

None of this related to what he was actually seeing, but I think it triggered other kinds of color memories and thoughts. Nowadays pictures, especially of design and paintings, give him more pleasure than struggling to remember how to read the newspaper, though he does give it a try every morning.

Music, too, not the jazz he used to love, which baffles him now, but singing like that of Jackie Evancho, whose voice he has just discovered and loves, very calming and lovely. Color and shapes and music appeal to different brain functions than language and reading and linear thought, so he can still enjoy these other pleasures.

And after I've taken a walk, I often bring him home pictures of what's growing out there. Today's group is about daylilies, a flower I love, because even though each spectacular bloom lasts only a day, hence the name, the plant goes on and one blooming and coming back and increasing year after year.



And there are wild ones just as tall and prolific as the cultivated kind.



Around here you can either see them at the roadside, along with chicory and queen anne's lace, or you can buy them at the garden place, same plant. Cracks me up.

There are several varieties of the yellow daylily, and here's a group of smaller flowers, with pink flowers whose name escapes me, blogistas, please chime in if you remember it



And then there's faithful old Autumn Joy sedum, getting all organized to bloom in September



Sedum is beautiful at all four seasons, a big point to those with small garden areas who can't afford part time plants!

3 comments:

  1. Love that poem. Are the flowers Batchelor's Buttons? Can't get a good look at them.

    Hugs to you and HP.

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  2. I love those purple flowers.. they are bi-annuals, that self seed. Locally (in eastern Queens) they were called lambs ears.. but i have no idea of their proper botanical name. they border on being weeds--but i used to intentional spread the seads, and move the baby plants about to have them scattered through the flower beds.

    I like Jacob's Tears too--another perennial that is a day flower--ephemeral blooms, but billions of them! (also purple)

    You know, if you are willing to forgo the blooms daylily flower buds are edible (they are common in chinese cooking)

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  3. It amazes me too how the nurseries can charge such exorbitant prices for things they have obviously dug up on the side of the road. However, let us take a shovel and try to dig our own and we could get carted off to jail!!

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