Saturday 20 August 2011

Saturday Photo: Flowers, Native and Otherwise

This is the season for Brown-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia or whatever you want to call this fantastic golden flower. They are native North American perennials and given some sunshine will bloom for several weeks at the end of the summer. A great flower which lifts my heart when I see it.

Other plants in other places will grow wild, and I was reminded of the impatiens I saw in Tanzania when I passed this little tree-garden. In the East Usambara Mountains where I had gone to look for wild Africn violets, impatiens were everywhere: can't find the pictures at the moment but when I do, I'll scan one and post it. There the plants will reseed, if not live for years. Here course winter will kill them. That's one of the somewhat sad things we must deal with in this climate--summers like the tropics but winters full of ice and snow.

Some people deny this--or perhaps use seasonal differences to flaunt their buying capacity. For three years this garden has featured palm trees which, unlike the figs that some old Italian gardeners overwinter by burying in the ground or bringing inside, were left to die in the cold. Seems to me it is a waste of gorgeous plants, and an affront to Mother Nature.



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