A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'P' - Passion Flower

My A-Z posts this year are based on my garden – flowers, animals, the birds and the bees, butterflies - with a bit of poetry thrown in. For some letters I am expecting to cheat somewhat – wishing they were here.

Please note that I have been/still am ill. Also I have had a computer failure that has not yet been resolved completely causing me to post late. I have been unable to reply to comments and to visit other A- Z participants for the past week. Will do my best to catch up as soon as I can; please accept my apologies in the meantime.

P – Passion Flower, Pheasant, Petunia, Peacock, Peony

Lay down on your pillow

And turn the lights down low

Let me take you to the garden

Where the passion flower grows.

 

Passion Flower

Roman Catholic priests (late 1500's) named it for the Passion (suffering and death) of Jesus Christ. The parts of the plant symbolised features of the Passion. The flower's petals and sepals represented the apostles who remained faithful to Jesus throughout the Passion. The circle of hair-like rays above the petals suggested the crown of thorns that Jesus wore the day he died.

Each day since late February, when it’s just light enough to see, we have heard, not the crowing of a cockerel, but the call of one of these magnificent birds:-

 

Cock Pheasant (on Tresco)

Gilded with leaf-thick paint; a steady

Eye fixed like a ruby rock;

Across the cidrous banks of autumn

Swaggers the stamping pheasant-cock.

At different times during the day it takes a stroll around two or three gardens before it returns to shelter under the bushes next door.

 

Cock Pheasant crossing drive next door

When it comes to flowers there are so many beginning with a ‘P,’ so I have to be careful which ones I choose to show.

These have been successful in the border and in tubs.

 

Petunias

There is no chance for any one of them to claim, "I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch,"  (see video link)

 Butterflies take a fancy to them too, but the Buddleia bush is a particular favourite for some.

 

Peacock Butterflies

Issa, a Japanese poet, is said to have written  up to 20,000 haiku, with around 84 about the peony, a flower which has a reputation for bringing prosperity:

Peonies

The god of fortune

and luck dwells here

a peony

 Poems:

• Where the Passion Flower Grows – Charles M Moore
• Cock-Pheasant – Laurie Lee
• Peony – Issa; Japanese peony haiku

Photos/Video

• I’m a lonely little Petunia in an Onion Patch – Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7nO9n6Ez64