A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'T' - Tulips

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.

T – Tulips, Thrush, Thistle, Treecreeper

Our tulips have no association with Amsterdam, unless the bulbs, at some time long in the past, came from there.

Tulips

 No longer shy, as days grow longer,

Raising their heads

They begin to flirt

Tulips dressed in many a color

Breezes swirling

Each floral skirt

The songsters’ battle has been joined between the blackbird and the thrush; this fellow is very melodious.

 

Song Thrush

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush

That overhung a mole-hill large and round,

I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush

Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound

With joy; …

When I see any form of thistle in the garden I must confess I root it out and dispatch it to the compost heap. In the country however I always admire one like these.

 

Spear Thistles

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men

Thistles spike the summer air

And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

The spear thistle is famous as the emblem of Scottish Kings. 

Just before Easter I spent nearly an hour trying to photograph a rare visitor to our garden, last seen in December 2010. The verse that follows could not be more apt; I did not succeed.

 

Treecreeper

Shy woodland birds of humans they show respectful fear

They climb tree trunks in search of insects and when human to them venture near

Of the tree trunk they disappear to the other side

Of watchers eyes they'd much prefer to hide.

 

Poems:

• Spring Flowers – Tulips – Mary Havran
• The Thrush’s Nest – John Clare
• Thistles – Ted Hughes
• Treecreepers – Francis Duggan

Photo:

• Common Treecreeper – Wikipedia Commons; CC BY-SA 3.0