The New Kid or Veni, Vedi, Visa

Rosa floribunda - Julia Child.

Yesterday's acquisition. Not red, but a startlingly good golden yellow. Beautifully convoluted flowers. What clinched the deal, though, was the strong mystery fragrance. Couldn't quite make it out - rose and something else. Checked again this afternoon and the answer is: rose with a licorice subnote.

What a Difference a Day Makes, or Did Someone Say Orange? (Part Deux)

Hybrid tea rose - Voodoo.

Day 1 - the bud is a deep, sunset orange with burnt orange-red streaks.

Day 4 - the flower starts opening; the overall color is a strong orange.

Day 5 - the flower is open; the center petals are now pale orange, while the outer ones are salmon to medium pink.

Morning and Evening

A hibiscus--pale orange to a human eye; golden yellow to the camera eye. Red center.

It Doesn't Get Much More Orange Than This

If it's flashy orange you want in the garden, the easiest and most economical way to go is the nasturtium. The seeds are inexpensive, roughly pea-sized and easy to handle, and germinate without a fuss. The flowers are edible; some folk put them in salads.

Legend has it that there are red varieties of nasturtium available. Perhaps owing to packaging goofs, we've had no luck in our quest for red nasturtiums. No matter the color described on the seed packet, the resulting flowers have been orange.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program

... for the two biggest lemons you've ever seen.

Weight: about a pound a piece. Variety: unknown.
The parent tree--a twisted, low growing specimen--bears only a few fruits each year, but they're whoppers.

Why is one shaped like a lemon (more or less) and the other like a grapefruit? Who knows? We just snap the photos and make lemonade here.

Did Someone Say Orange? (Part Un)

Rosa floribunda, Singin' in the Rain.

The grower's catalog describes its color as cinnamon-apricot. (Apricot? Maybe. Cinnamon? No, no, no.)

This garden specimen is a pale orange with pink-streaked edges. The color is strongest when the flower first opens and bleaches out as the bloom ages.

Elusive Red

True reds are hard to find. No matter the type of flower, seekers after red often end up with a plant which produces blooms in hues of dark pink or even orange. "How could anyone call this red?" we cry when the blood-colored blossom we anticipated opens in fuschia.

Mix-ups at the growers? Mislabeling at the nursery? Probably.

But perhaps, like the camera eye, each human eye perceives color just a little differently; hence, one man's red is another's magenta.

The Martha Washington geranium (pelargonium) pictured here is, to the photographer's naked eye, a much deeper red than the camera was able to interpret. The first impressions were on the pink side. This shot comes closer to "reality," but is still not quite correct.

The camera eye has got some neat tricks, but it has yet to master all those of the human eye.

The Sage Penis Series

A belated birthday dedication to Gene T., who once described one of my sculptures as consisting of five waving penises. Here are five more found in my garden yesterday afternoon. The wind was causing them to wave, which is how a finger wound up in Shot 1.

Shot 5 is a profile view (less obviously phallic - but note the scary spur) of the flower from Shot 1. Shot 3 (with aphid) is a different flower from the same plant: a white variety of salvia greggii aka Autumn Sage.

Not the "Perfect Rose"

... but one pretty good ranunculus.