Color As in Nature

Hey, You Bees! Here We Are! 2011

Regular readers of What I Saw will recall that there is a lot of color in the Bonney house. Sometimes, though, even all that painted color isn’t enough to get you over the hump of winter. We try to resolve that by bringing in lots of cut flowers.

There are just about always fresh flowers in our house, even in rooms we don’t use much. The dining and living rooms, for example, aren’t used much unless we have company. But they have the best direct sunlight. Things thrive in that light. The kitchen, on the other hand, is where we eat most of our meals and spend a lot of time. But the light passes over the kitchen quickly. So flowers tend to come and go from there quickly. The same applies to the family room. Still, there are always fresh flowers in both of these rooms.

The only variation on this theme is that during the winter it’s usually necessary to bring flowers in. Mrs. B. knows when things are available and where the best seasonal deals are, so it’s not like we’re operating a hot house or a rest home for expensive exotics. Sometimes daisies are enough.

Daisies, 2011

Or hyacinths.

Hyacinths, 2003

As spring approaches we’re able to take cuttings from the yard and from the nearby woods. I noticed a forsythia bush blooming just down the street the other day. Back under the trees where we live, it’ll be another week or two before the forsythia open up. The same for the daffodils.

Among of the great floral joys of this season are the camellias. We have almost a dozen camellia bushes in our yard that bloom at different times of the year. The narrow lane we live on is also lined with them. My wife likes the variegated varieties that have colors and stripes than make them look like circus clowns. I prefer the old fashion ones, like the blossom shown above. Who couldn’t like those soft red petals?

Flowers are always a good excuse for pulling out the macro lens. A picture of the camellia above taken with a regular lens would have been a picture of the flower. But the same scene shot with the macro lens and a wide-open aperture is a siren call from all those little stamen to all the bees around, as if to say, “Here we are! Come taste our gold!”