A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'L'

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 – a sort of wish they were here.

L – Linnet, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Lupin, Lily

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

It would have been easy to find a verse for a skylark but I haven’t seen this bird for years. However a species that appeared in the garden this winter is another that inspired Wordsworth to write:

Linnet

Thou, Linnet! In thy green array,

Presiding Spirit here to-day,

Dost lead the revels of the May;

And this is thy dominion.

Bird strikes are quite common on the windows of our home. 

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

This fellow was a bit worse for wear as a result. At the time I had been surprised to see what I thought was a female lesser spotted woodpecker clinging to a sturdy foxglove in the garden. Unfortunately it flew as soon as it sensed my movement at our lounge window. Then I saw the male bird, stunned on the path beneath the window, which it had apparently struck leaving a small contact outline. Initially its head was hunched in its shoulders, its eyes were closed and its beak gaping open. Over the next three-quarters of an hour it slowly recovered. During this time I managed to get a number of photos including the one above. However when it became more lively and I tried to get one more shot, it clung to the adjacent garden wall and within a few seconds it had gone. Its flight path was straight in the same direction as the earlier female bird.

I still see woodpeckers from time to time in adjacent sycamore trees and even attacking the peanuts not put out for them. You will have to wait for ‘W’ to one of those.

Lupins

My corner thronging with lupins bloom

Today I slouch here, with the dispelled gloom.

Colourful nostalgic thoughts fresh as morning dew

Lupins-- my first love its no one but you!

With the lupins, a single flower competes:

Lily

 The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble sheep a threat'ning horn:
While the Lily white shall in love delight,
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

OK! OK! I’ll acknowledge that my lily is not white so please accept this one instead

Lily

 Poems:

• To a Skylark – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• The Green Linnet – William Wordsworth
• The Lupins Corner – Supratim
• The Lily – William Blake

Photo attribution:

• Linnet - Mindaugas Urbonas; CC BY-SA 2.5

A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'F'- Foxglove

 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.

F - Fieldfare, Foxglove, Fuschia, Fern, Frog, Fox

From time to time we see a bird easily mistaken for a Spring songster

Fieldfare

 Or flocking fieldfares, speckled like the thrush,

Picking the berry from the hawthorn bush,

That come and go on Winter’s chilling wing,

And seem to share no sympathy with Spring.

It will be some months yet before the digitalis rise,

Foxgloves (Digitalis)

Through quaint obliquities I might pursue

These cravings; when the foxglove, one by one,

Upwards through every stage of the tall stem,

Had shed beside the public way its bells,

Or this shrub shows such blooms:

Fuschia blooms

And the glorious rose with her flushing face,
And the fuschia with her form of grace,

It isn’t always flowers that catch your eye among the flowers; fiddler's elbows can be quite striking even though they don’t raise a sound.

Bracken (Fiddler's elbows)

The young of this years spawning will appear among the shrubs usually in June. How soon will it be before they go a wooing too?

 I have yet to meet this cunning fellow in the garden, but elsewhere it is not uncommon

Urban Fox (in a Birmingham garden)

 Who

Wears the smartest evening dress in England?

Checks his watch by the stars

And hurries, white-scarfed

To the opera

In the flea-ridden hen-house

Where he will conduct the orchestra?

Poems:

• Fieldfare – John Clare, The Shepherd’s Calendar, March
• Foxglove – from The Prelude – Wordsworth
•  Fuschia – Harriet Annie Wilkins, A Song of the Flowers
• Fox – Ted Hughes

Photo attributions:

• Fieldfare – Feb 2012; By nottsexaminer; upload by Fae – CC BY-SA 2.0
• Fuschia – By Ron Saunders from Warrington, UK – CC BY-SA 2.0
• Fox – By Oosoom – CC BY-SA 3.0

A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'E' - Elderberry

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.

E - Elderberry, Earthworm, Earwig

This post has no birds – perhaps this is strange because they do like the elderberries.

Elderberries

In Denmark there is a tradition of a female elf in the elder tree. She leaves it at midnight; strolls around the fields, but returns to it before morning.

Elder Flowers

 The winsome, winsome elder tree,
Beneath whose shade I sit reclin'd;--
It holds a witch within its bark,
A lovely witch who haunts the dark,
And fills with love my mind.

What I did not know about the elder was its association with death, even Wordsworth recognised this.

 The Elder-tree that grew

Beside the well-known Charnel house had then

A dismal look

An unsung hero of any garden is one that works below the ground.

When the earth is turned in spring

The worms are fat as anything.

Earthworm

And birds come flying all around

To eat the worms right off the ground.

They say that the early bird gets the worm but worms take a different view; for them the early worm gets the bird!

Earwigs are readily recognized insect pests in gardens. Although they can devastate seedling vegetables or annual flowers and often seriously damage maturing soft fruit, they also have a beneficial role having been shown to be important predators of aphids.

Female earwig in its nest with eggs

 This nest was found underneath a house brick in a Chester garden.

A silver trail across the monitor;
fresh mouse-droppings beneath the swivel-chair;
the view obscured by rogue japonica.
Released into the wild, where earwigs dare

Poems:

• The Elder-Witch – George Borrow
• Elder-tree – Wordsworth (Growth of a Poet’s Mind – Book VIII)
• The Worm – Ralph Bergengren
• Where Earwigs Dare – Matt Harvey

Photo attributions:

• Earthworm – 2011; by Rob Hille – Public domain
• Earwig - Nabokov at en.wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0

A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'D' - Daffodils

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 – a sort of wish they were here.

D - Daffodils, Daisy, Dandelion, Dove, Dunnock

There is only one way to start this post; with William Wordsworth, of course,

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hill,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Daffodils

 Wordsworth spent of lot of time in the Lake District which enabled him too write:

In youth from rock to rock I went,

From hill to hill in discontent

Of pleasure high and turbulent,

Most pleased when most uneasy;

But now my own delights I make, -

My thirst at every rill can slake,

and gladly Nature's love partake

of Thee, sweet Daisy!

Daisies

Somehow I think these were not the type of daisy meant by Wordsworth. 

Daisies in the lawn are not to be encouraged nor is the dandelion is a plant we want to see:

A Patch of Dandelions

 With locks of gold today;

Tomorrow, silver grey;

Dandelion Seed Head

 Then blossom-bald. Behold,

O man, they fortune told!

 The hedge sparrow (dunnock) is a common garden bird that enthrals you with its song:

Dunnock

 A dunnock perched content on outhouse beams,
Plump-feathered in striped brown and misty grey,
That I disturbed from drowsy dunnock dreams
To startled flight. Away! Escape! Away!

If we are to escape let’s have some fun before we go:

Let's take off all our clothes. It's time for shamelessness.
On nights of self-reflection, we go skinny-dipping with our self-perception.
We join the stars dancing on the water
and we emerge, red-skinned not red-faced. A collared dove coo-coo-coos

Collared Dove

At one time the collard dove was a very common visitor to our garden; now it has been crowded out by the ubiquitous wood pigeon.

A late candidate for inclusion in this post is:

A Dog in Disgrace

 Poems

• I wandered lonely as a cloud – Wordsworth
• To the Daisy - Wordsworth
• The Dandelion – John B Tabb
• Dunnock – Alan Hartley
• The Collared Dove – Alexander Hawkins

Photo attributions:

• Patch of Dandelions – By Robert Engelhart – CC BY-SA 3.0
• Dandelion Seed Head – By Tony Hisgett, Birmingham, UK – CC BY-SA 2.0
• Dunnock – by Dr Raju Kasambe – CC BY-SA 3.0
• Collared Dove – Adrian Pingstone – Public domain

A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'B'

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.

B - Bluebell, Begonia, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Bullfinch, Bumble Bee

One day, one day, I’ll climb that distant hill

And pick the bluebells there!

Bluebells

 We inherited lots of bluebells when we moved into our house over twenty years ago so we do not have to climb those distant hills. The flowers have spread so much that we have had to thin them out when they begin to swamp the borders. 

There are some plants that thrive in pots or  tubs..

Begonia

However they all welcome the humble:

Bumble Bee

The pedigree of honey

Does not concern the bee

A clover, any time, to him

Is aristocracy

It’s always a pleasure to hear them buzzing around as it is to listen to the birds.

O blackbird! sing me something well:

Blackbird (tuning in!)

Of  course you just have to stop and watch:

Blue Tit

 Lithest, gaudiest harlequin!

Prettiest tumbler ever seen,

Light of heart and light of limb

What has now become of him.

But by far the most colourful bird that visits us occasionally is:

Bullfinch

We may have to wait till May before we can say

See the bright bullfinch now,

High on the apple bough.

Poems

• Bluebells – George Barlow
• The Bee – Emily Dickinson
• Blackbird – Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Blue Tit – Wordsworth
• Bullfinch – Anthony Rye

Photo Attribution

• Blue Tit – Jan 2011 By Tony Hissett – CC BY-SA 2.0
• Bullfinch – Mark S Jobling – Public domain

A-Z Challenge 2013 - 'A'

My A-Z posts this year will be based on things in 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.

A - Anemone, Aquilegia, Azalea, Red Admiral

We have a lot of perennial plants. Among them is the:

Anemone

A perennial may be, but the anemone doesn’t always put in an appearance unlike the:

Aquilegia (& Forget-me-nots)

These seed themselves and appear in all sorts of unexpected places like against the next door fence.

Aquilegia

However if you use garden pots it’s easier to maintain control:

Azaleas

Of course it is wildlife that you wish to see, like this ‘admirable’ sight:

Red Admiral

I’ve watched you now a full half-hour,

Self-poised upon that yellow flower;

Wordsworth – To a Butterfly.

Poetry in Stamps

"All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;"

This makes an introduction to Shakespeare. My first two stamps of a set of four issued in 1964 commemorate the Shakespeare Festival.

I know it's Spring but John Keats 'To Autumn' always sticks in my mind: "Seasons of mists and yellow fruitfuness"

Issued in 1971, the 150th anniversary of his death.

For William Wordsworth you may have expected daffodils but I prefer: "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky:"

Grasmere - issued in 1970, the 200th anniversary of his birth.

I know it's only May but it's hard to better Burns:

"My love is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June"

Issued in 1996

Issued 1966

I even found Burns on a Russian stamp which I've copied from the internet:

And stamps for Alexander Pushkin and Alexander Blok

"Black night.
White snow.
The wind, the wind!
It will not let you go. The wind, the wind!
Through God's whole world it blows

The wind is weaving
The white snow.
Brother ice peeps from below
Stumbling and tumbling
Folk slip and fall.
God pity all!"

From Blok's 'The Twelve' (1918)

And finally a stamp of a poet and a diplomat from my Mexico page:

Amando Nervo (1870 -1919) is reputed to be the most noted Mexican poet of the 19th Century.

More poetry on stamps at Viridian's postcard blog