Nothing too challenging today - something to delight the eye and please the nose - flowers from the hedgerow - dog roses and honeysuckle.Powys County Council's road gang came along last week and scalped the verges. It's a necessary job; the visibility in the lane is much improved but the overall effect is rather stark. The cutter does not reach the honeysuckle and roses which scramble through the hedges though, and they seem particularly rampant this year.
The hedges are dripping with creamy yellow honeysuckle which binds and winds its way up towards the light, making a muddle with bramble and briar. Roses - they appear such simple fragile blooms of pink and white - are making their own skyward journey. Put some frothy elderflower into the mix, perhaps a deep pink foxglove too, and I'll hold in my eyes as pretty a country posy as you could wish for.
11 comments:
No itchies and scratchies today then!
Wonderful that the Honeysuckle has survived the hedging. I always think it's such a shame - though, as you say, it's a necessary job.
Thanks for that lovely image.
Our roads deptartment was by this week - I went down to the road to pick some daisies from the masses blowing in the ditches, to find them.....gone. Ah well, there'll be something else soon!
Do you remember another album we once had? Hmmm? 'The Drop of a Hat', I think it was called, and on it there was a song all about how the Honeysuckle wound this way, and the Bindweed went that; dreadfully sad when you dwell on the metaphor.
Hang on, let me go and get my Google fork and delve a moment ...
... ahah,
MISALLIANCE
The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
And many other creepers do the same,
But some climb anticlockwise; the bindweed does, for one,
Or Convulvulus, to give its proper name.
Rooted on either side of the door, one of each species grew,
And raced towards the window ledge above.
Each one corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew,
Touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love.
Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed,
“Oh! Let us get married if my parents don't mind. We’d
Be loving and inseparable, inexplicably entwined. We'd
Live happily ever after,” said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.
To the honeysuckle's parents it came as a shock.
The bindweed, they said, are inferior stock.
They're uncultivated, of breeding bereft.
We twine to the right while they twine to the left.
Said the anticlockwise bindweed, to the clockwise honeysuckle:
“We’d better start saving—many a mickle mak's a muckle—
Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck'll
Take a turn for the better,” said the bindweed to the honeysuckle,
A bee who was passing remarked to them then:
“I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Consider your offshoot, if offshoots there be.
They'll never receive any blessings from me.
Poor little sucker! How will it learn
When it's climbing which way to turn?
Right? Left? What a disgrace!
Or it may go straight upwards and fall flat on its face."
Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bind-
Weed: “It seems that against us all fate has combined,
Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling Columbine,
Thou art lost and gone forever. We shall never be entwined."
Together they found them the very next day.
They had pulled up their root and just shriveled away.
Deprived of the freedom for which we must fight,
To veer to the left, or to veer to the right.
Never mind the hairs on goosegogs; it's only the scent of a honeysuckle ... Anyway, go check the which way your Runners are twining tomorrow. (Not forgetting meanwhile to make note which way the water went down the plug. Australians, please do this on your heads.
Love @x
Our roads are plenty wide enough but ... I have a neighbor who put his driveway entrance in the wrong place, he says he can't see to get out of his driveway. A few years ago he called the town (NOT ME!) and they came and cut EVERYTHING along the road, including my sweet peas which had just started to bloom. Now I try to keep things lower, but ... I long to live somewhere further away from my neighbors. I can almost smell your honeysuckle and roses! (deep sigh...)
I've not seem any honeysuckle lately... but then I've not been for a walk for a bit (must make some time!).
Love the photo. I could smell the honeysuckle from here.
Divine, isn't it? Your descriptions remind me of the lanes around here too. What a delight - and I'm so glad the ghastly cutter didn't destroy them.
Lovely Lovely Lovely. Thanks for describing it for us.
Love the poem..It's a brilliant year for honeysuckle and there seem to be more shades this year, far nicer than cultivated ones and the smells so much stronger..don't tell anybody but i dug up a hazel tree about 6ft because it had the most beautiful creamy honeysuckle entwined around it and i replanted it nearer the house, it's still going strong and gives me pleasure every year.. See you soon xo
love honeysuckle - especially evening or early morning, eating lettuce now!
Post a Comment