In life, there are cruel disappointments.
Cruel disappointment
Leaf tree curl is back again! 😦 😦
And, then, there are serendipitous moments
of sweet bliss ~
Sweet bliss ~ my morning view of the Michelia.
Does one ever outweigh the other? 🙂
What is the balance?
© silkannthreades
The nor’wester blows. Summer-like heat bruises the body; compresses the air within.    Barely emerged from winter chill, not yet accustomed to the freshness of spring on my shoulders, I flail under hot air and bluster. Bring back the southerly, I wail; a gentle one, dipped in iced water, iced with snow, one that I can enjoy like an ice cream cone.
Some of you will remember that, a few months back, my daughter was hospitalised. She has been out of hospital for a while now. She is working slowly towards a better state of well-being. In recent days she has been able to return to writing poetry and has felt strong enough to publish one poem on her new blog, where she goes by the lovely name of ousel. If you would like to read her poem, The Snow Nymph, you can find her here   I confess that I don’t always understand my daughter’s poems because they are full of allusions and references which are beyond my small brain, but I always find them beautiful. 🙂
Afterword:
The michelia in my photo is very bedraggled as a result of our capricious weather. It seems to be flowering far too early, this year. Last year it didn’t flower till late August/early September.
And a special note for Steve , at Portrait of Wildflowers, who teaches me new words, almost daily: the corolla of my michelia is fugacious, as fugacious as this summer heat in early spring.
Tomorrow, our temperatures are expected to return to more normal ones for the beginning of August. The michelia is likely to be bitten by frost. 😦
© silkannthreades
This day began with visions…of loveliness. The first vision came from the words of William Wordsworth in his sonnet “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”. Whilst London is far, far from me, the lines
“This city now doth, like a garment, wear the
The beauty of the morning;Â “
were a perfect description of the loveliness of my garden, bathed in morning light. Not my entire garden, really, but the focus of my second vision, the Michelia tree.http://www.wairere.co.nz/Trees_Evergreen/Michelia Yesterday, I didn’t believe the tree could look and smell any more beautiful than it did, but I was wrong. For, today, it is beyond sublime and I can scarcely take my gaze from it.
Michelia, wearing the Morning Light
My photos don’t do the vision justice but, perhaps, they will give you the smallest glimpse of what is before my eyes…. (the captions are taken from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge)
Now, as I looked at the Michelia, all arrayed in white blossom, I began to think of a conversation I had with Annie at http://forestsogreen.wordpress.com/.  She commented about the floral print dress, worn by Grandmother, in my previous post here: ” My grandmother also wore those dresses made of fabric with flowers 
” said Annie. To which I replied, “Yes, Annie! Looking at the photo, I remembered so clearly those flower print dresses. My grandmother also had her flower print dress for morning when she did most of her household work and cooking and, then, in the afternoon, she wore a nicer, better flower print dress. She didn’t flop around in her pyjamas like her lazy grandaughter!!!!” And, then, from my thoughts came laughter and love because, suddenly, my beautiful Michelia became a living, visionary version of my Nana’s floral print morning dress. And, of the days, when we took our garden bouquets and imprinted them on the fabric of our daily lives; our house dresses and our aprons and our dresses for “best” .
Enough of the fanciful. Let me return to the practical. My good blogger friend at http://ordinarygood.wordpress.com/ told me that the soft fuzzy bud cover on magnolia and Michelia blooms is known as a perule. Such a pretty and perfect word for them. These last two photos are for her.
© silkannthreades
silkannthreades 