Garden art.

by

Other than a few large, rather attractive rocks that somehow migrated to my perennial beds (either during the last glacial event or when the landscapers didn’t want to hit them with a lawnmower), I don’t have any garden ornaments on display.  As I garden in a public space, it’s probably not a good idea for me to pick what type of garden art everyone in the apartment complex should be subjected to – I’m sure I’d get it wrong in at least one person’s view.  Like all art, opinions regarding garden ornaments are deeply personal, but as this blog post from Three Dogs in a Garden serves to illustrate, the line between huh? and what on earth?! is a fine one, indeed.  I wonder what my landlady would do if I plunked Bigfoot down in the Shasta daisies…?

Your turn: what types of garden art/ornaments do you have in your garden? Feel free to post links to your photos/blog posts in the comments!  

FPSGNormandeau

This little statue can be found in the Shakespeare Garden at the Silver Springs Botanical Garden here in Calgary.  Photo taken in July of last year.

Finally….

by

FPPRNormandeau

This is what goes on when the snow lets up for two weeks. All of a sudden, the trees are sporting tiny ultragreen leaves, the dandelions are carpeting the lawn, and the neighbour’s forsythia has exploded into a brilliant yellow bloom you need sunglasses to admire.

And there is happening in the garden….

FPPFNormandeau

The Door is Ajar: Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley.

by

 9780345539960

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d – Alan Bradley (2016, Doubleday Canada)

The eighth book in the Flavia de Luce mystery series packs a right-between-the-eyes knockout punch – and no, I won’t spoil it for you, other than to say this is an even bigger deal than her temporary “exile” in Canada, where she attended a private boarding school, solved a weird murder involving a body stuffed up a chimney, and learned more about her family’s connection to a secret organization which I shouldn’t discuss further.  (Go get book seven, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, and read it right now.  It’s a ragged and uneven go, but it serves as a decent set up for the new book).  In Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, Flavia returns home to her beloved Buckshaw just before Christmas, to find that her father is ill and the household is unsettled and cold.  The accidental finding of the body of a wood carver while running an errand cheers Flavia up immensely, as she goes to great lengths and concocts elaborate lies to uncover the murderer.  Despite remaining endearingly irrepressible, Flavia is definitely taking on a more mature, experienced voice (if that can even be possible) as the series develops and she approaches her teenage years.

*

What are you reading this weekend?

Flowery Friday.

by

FPNHRSNormandeau

If you’ve been following Flowery Prose for a while, you’ll know that I post a new photo of these beauties every single year around this time. It’s a tradition I’m sticking to…I hope you don’t mind.  🙂

 

 

Fleeting….

by

FPNormandeau

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

∼Mark Twain

While waiting on the fresh snow to melt outside, I had a bit of fun photographing the bright flowers in a mixed bouquet given to me by a friend.  I spotted a couple of crocus blooming in the garden on 31 March, but they were eaten by jackrabbits within a few hours of my noticing.  “Ephemeral,” indeed….

The Door is Ajar: Yes by Rosemary Griebel.

by

(Rambling preamble).

A few years ago, I set out all eager and full of abundant ideas and started oh about five blogs on WordPress, nearly all of which have, over time, become encapsulated within Flowery Prose. I’ve hung onto The Door is Ajar, which, for those of you who haven’t subscribed to it, is an ongoing list of books I’ve been reading and a super brief commentary about them – not usually what I would consider entire reviews, because that requires more time than I have. At any rate, I have finally made the decision to amalgamate the two blogs here.  After all, books and writing and reading are a big part of Flowery Prose…and while I’m a bit afraid that some of you may be put off by my eclectic reading tastes, who knows? – this might just go over nicely in the end.  I just really feel the need to streamline the whole blogging process and get everything (bad pun alert) on one page. I won’t completely shutter the site of The Door is Ajar, but I won’t make any new entries for the foreseeable future – click here if you want to pop over and see what I was doing.

(The good stuff).

images

Yes – Rosemary Griebel (2011 Frontenac House Ltd., Calgary)

I’m not sure how many of these poems from Rosemary Griebel are autobiographical but her incredibly powerful portraits of parents, lovers, and friends, the prairie landscape of childhood, and journeys to Europe and other regions of Canada (as well as some interesting and bold reimaginings of history) feel so personal and intimate I don’t want to believe otherwise.  I first selected this collection because Griebel is from Calgary, and although many of the poems were attractive to me due to that shared geography, I became far more emotionally engaged than I had anticipated – these are lines and stanzas that will bring tears to your eyes and make your stomach twist over, more than once.  Unexpected and absolutely beautiful work.

March blog fun.

by

I haven’t posted one of these roundups in a few months (to say it’s been an insanely futile effort to get anything done busy lately is a massive understatement), but I’m always coming across interesting things to share, and I’ve been saving up links from a bunch of sources. Hope you enjoy this collection!

This amazing photography technique using UV light takes floral imagery to new heights – check out the breathtaking work of Craig Burrows here.

Granted, winter is officially over in the northern hemisphere, but it’s still well worth it to watch these jaw-dropping video timelapses of frost and other wintry occurrences, shot by Danish filmmaker Alf Pilz.

The 51st American football (NFL) championship game is also a done deal, but I love this fun post by Alys of Gardening Nirvana so much I have to share it: click over and enjoy The Super Bowl of Gardening.  

I was not previously familiar with the poetic form the Etheree, but this beautiful offering from Linda of The Task at Hand is a perfect welcome to spring.

Very early in the year, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) posted a collection of fascinating and funny wildlife photos from northern Ontario – you can take a look at them here.  There is a link at the bottom of the page which takes you to the CBC Up North Facebook page and more pics.

Finally, a smidgen of the freelancing work and fiction that I’ve been working on has been published in the past few months, including:

My very short story “Gardening in a Post-Apocalyptic World” is included in Third Flatiron Publishing’s newest anthology Principia Ponderosa.

“The Forest Formula,” my article about designing forest gardens, is featured in the Spring 2017 issue of Herb Quarterly.

The Spring issue is at the printers right now (and I have an article in it as well!), but “Grow Delicious Microgreens Indoors This Winter” was published in the Winter 2017 issue of Archive, a fantastic new print magazine out of northern Alberta.

 

Enjoy the start of your week! It’s finally starting to look and feel like spring here in Calgary!  Many years we still have a lot of snow on the ground and winter-like temperatures in late March, but we are super fortunate this year and my hubby and my brother and I were delighted to get out on the golf course this afternoon. Temporary greens, of course, but it was so great just to soak up the sunshine and play!  I love this time of year!