Sunday, July 15, 2007

surprise, buddleia, cheers

A young woman, who, for want of friendliness in the past, I supposed did not like me, stops to talk to me in the Grove. We walk on together until our ways part.

Buddleia is everywhere in flower. Most of the year the shrub looks faded and untidy, particularly on the edge of railway lines, where it seems to have found a friendly place to grow. But today, the usually purple, sometimes white, cones or spikes of crowded, tiny flowers, each with a yellow centre only noticeable when you look closely, are spectacular, as they twist into the sun. Buddleia is sometimes known as the butterfly shrub because butterflies like it, but in the vicinity of the buddleias I see, there are no butterflies in sight today.

In Dover Street in London, a stately man wearing a panama hat and a black tail coat stops in a doorway to address a small grop of tourists. He is wearing a green carnation; a matching green handkerchief flows out of his top pocket.

1 comment:

rosemary catling said...

I found your blog when I was looking up buddleia .I was interested to see if anyone else had noticed that the butterflies ,such as there are,seem to be positively avoiding it this year. Our tree is the common self- seeded kind that they used to love.Also no bees.
An interesting blog I will visit you again,