In the corner of a garden are two nymphs, neglected and forgotten.
On the slope of The Common facing the church of King Charles the Martyr there is a horse chestnut, which is always the first to blossom. The slope is south-facing and always strikes me as a good place to plant a vineyard. Today the horse chestnut candles are resplendent, bright, even in this afternoon's shower.
Half way up Mount Sion there is a strip of grass in front of a house. Today, It is full of bluebells in bloom. Bluebells, as a rule, prefer woodland and shade. So what are they doing in the open? I remember that there used to be a tree pressed up against wall of the house, and it was in its shade that the bluebells must have established themselves. Now that the tree is gone, the bulbs respond to the unaccustomed light by flowering early, but how long will they last without shade? I have noticed that in some of the parkland in these parts, bluebells cluster round established trees, but generally indicate, by where they grow, the limits of the shade cast by the tree's canopy.
3 comments:
I have some bluebells in my yard, though over here they are called English woods hyacinths.
They are beautiful and give off a most delightful fragrance.
I like the idea of "planting" wood nymphs in one's garden. I'll have to visit garden centers to see if we have any. We have too many gnomes and cherubs, but I've not seen nymphs before.
In Finistere there were little bluebells, much smaller than the woodland ones, just a few bells on each, growing in the fields among the grass. They tended to be towards the field edges I suppose, but were quite in the open.
I like those nymphs very much, they are such jolies-laides!
Crow: Bluebells and hyacinths are the same family aren't they?. We have cultivated ones which don't look much like the wood variety. In England, they are very special in May, carpeting the floor of woods with a hazy blue and filling the air with a powerful scent. There is a song called The Blue Bells of Scotland but I have never been in Scotland in bluebell time. I have always been puzzled by Edgar Allan Poe's poem To Helen where he writes of "thy hyancinth hair, thy classic face". It makes you think of that new film called Avatar where there is a planet inhabited by beautiful blue people.
Lucy: Those Breton bluebells sound interesting and delicate. Do you think that they are small because they do not like the warmer climate. Bluebells seem to favour the cooler end of the temperate spectrum
I can't remember in the corner of which garden I spotted the nymphs but it did strike me that had you been there you would proabably have taken the same photograph only better.
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