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
.jpg) |
| 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,
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
