Tag Archives: #mysongscapes

That Morning Sun – Our Constant Star

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I am posting this last (for now) musical blog in #mysongscapes of winter 2020 from my bed at home where my 2-day old bionic knee is being massaged by the ice machine.

I typed that first line last week so I’d have my blog all ready to post, before my eldest son in England convinced me to call the surgeon’s office Monday and cancel my St. Patrick’s day knee replacement, which was booked last autumn. “Why would you subject yourself to elective surgery, plus months of outside physiotherapy, with the increased risk of contagion? This thing is coming to the UK now and it’s coming to you.” So I did cancel my operation – at the same time as my provincial government asked hospitals to cancel non-essential surgeries. My non-bionic knee and I are together for a while longer. Sadly, I don’t have my dramatic first sentence anymore, but that’s perfectly okay.

This year, more than ever, I am so happy that spring is imminent, arriving at precisely 11:49:28 pm Eastern Daylight time tonight. At that moment, i.e. the vernal equinox – from the Latin aequinoctium or “equal night” – we reach the point in our year when earth experiences an equal number of hours of daylight and darkness (though apparently there is a teeny bit more daylight than dark at our latitude because of our atmosphere!) According to Wikipedia, “An equinox is commonly regarded as the instant of time when the plane (extended indefinitely in all directions) of earth‘s equator passes through the center of the sun.”  Intriguingly, this is also the earliest vernal equinox in 124 years.

I’m not an early morning person so I don’t photograph many sunrises, but this was a pretty one in Chicago a few years ago. That ball of yellow lighting up Lake Michigan is approximately 4.6 billion years old. The sun is not much older than earth, since our own planet is believed to have accreted 4.5 billion years ago from the solar nebula, i.e. the cloud of dust and gas that orbited the sun after its own formation.  It is a fiery ball of hydrogen and helium and though it looks massive to us (according to NASA, if the sun were hollow it would take 1.3 million earths to fill it up), it is a “yellow dwarf” or “G-type main-sequence star”.

The sun is our very own star, the centre of our solar system. It was rising over the savannah, below, when I was on safari in Kenya a few years ago. But our solar system is likely just one of billions of planetary systems in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, though only some 2,500 have been counted so far. And the Hubble explorer telescope has estimated some 100-200 billion galaxies in the universe, full of their own stars and planetary systems. The numbers boggle the mind.

In the southern hemisphere, the March equinox is the beginning of autumn. In the northern hemisphere winter is now officially over, even if it likes to hang around and harass spring with the occasional late snowfall – illustrating why glory-of-the-snow, below, is the perfect common name for Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa…..

…..and why crocuses have the good sense not to open wide until the snow melts and “that morning sun” shines down on them…..

…. and why Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ (Iris winogradowii x Iris histrioides) is such a wonderful little trooper, given she seems to shrug off the most inclement weather….

…. then goes on to shine with her garden friends, the orange crocuses (C. x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’) a few days later!

In other words, in springtime in Canada, it pays not be the early bird – unless you’re a robin finding nesting material….

…. but wait until the spring sun teases open your shy flowers, like winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), below, which exhibits “thermonasty” in the presence of sunshine (i.e. it opens its tepals, which stay closed in cloudy, cool weather).

It has been quite a wild winter, hasn’t it? Not necessarily weather-wise, since we’ve had milder weather this year than many winters, as you can see from my highly unscientific snowdrop almanac below…..

…… but it was a life-altering kind of winter, with cataclysmic global shocks to which most of us are complete strangers. We like to think we are in control of our health. We trust our governments (mostly) to do the right thing. We take our creature comforts for granted. We think we need the company of other people. We engage in dark humour, then feel bad for trying to make light of a dire situation.  We worry – about our families, our friends, even people we don’t know who are going through trauma in these times of contagion. Our retirement funds are tanking. We are frightened, but try not to panic. And viruses aside, winter can be hard emotionally, the low light levels, the absence of green and living things, the constant cold. Seasonal affective order literally making us sad or depressed. So the coming of spring this year is more than welcome; it seems like a miracle of normalcy. That daffodils and hellebores will bloom once again….

….. and crocuses will spread their cheer.

The little spring bulbs always inspire me to create tiny bouquets…..

…. which generate an abundance of joy in inverse proportion to their size.

Witch hazels will unfurl their ribbon petals, if they haven’t already….

…. and the oft-unnoticed flowers of willows will attract native bees….

…. as will the intricate flowers of red maple (Acer rubrum).

Have you ever looked closely at maple flowers? They are tiny miracles of complexity. This is silver maple (Acer saccharinum).

It pays to peer closely at the little blossoms of cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) as they open. Aren’t they beautiful?

It doesn’t matter how many times I photograph ‘Leonard Messel’ magnolia (M. x loebneri); I am always bewitched by its grace and beauty.

Brassy forsythia isn’t on everyone’s favourite list for spring, and it’s easy to see why. But this enchanting combination of pale-yellow weeping forsythia (Forsythia suspensa) and Siberian squill (Scilla sibirica) at Toronto’s Spadina House always intrigues me. There’s just something about yellow and blue in springtime.

As the sun strengthens, buds will burst open on the trees, like this velvety parcel of shagbark hickory flowers (Carya ovata)….

…. and this exuberant explosion of flowers and leaves on Manchurian maple (Acer tegmentosum).

Leaves, of course, are the most important partners of our sun. It is leaves like the white oak leaves, below, that harvest the energy of the sun during photosynthesis…..

……absorbing carbon dioxide through the stomata and water from the roots to synthesize carbohydrates for the tree while releasing as a waste product the oxygen that permits the existence of life on earth. It is much more complicated than that, of course, with light cycles and dark cycles, but in essence this is the power of green leaves and that morning sun.

So as winter ends and spring begins, I’d like to offer a toast to the sun that will greet us tomorrow morning and every morning after that. Our constant star. And, of course, I have a song for that!

*********

The last song of #mysongscapes is one I heard for the first time only last year, by an artist I didn’t know at all before then.  Melody Gardot has quite a story herself, one that makes coronavirus look manageable. She started music lessons at the age of nine. By16 she was playing piano in Philadelphia bars on the weekends: the Mamas and the Papas, Radiohead, Duke Ellington. In 2004 at the age of 19, she was studying fashion when she was struck on her bike by an SUV making an illegal turn. She sustained a serious head injury as well as spinal and pelvic injuries. At first she couldn’t talk or move and suffered from memory loss. In a hospital bed for a year, she had to re-learn simple tasks. It would take her three years to speak properly.

Photo by Stefanie Meynberg

Music was the primary tool in helping her recover. As she said in an interview with The Brisbane Times: “Music is one of the only things that helps to reconnect neural pathways in our brain: listening, performing, singing, making a verbal attempt to sing along or hum. In my case this was why it was pointed out to me. First because I had some experience as a young person playing piano bars and so it was an innate ability but furthermore because of its ability to really help me progress when no other progress can be made.” Eventually, after much else failed, her doctor encouraged her to work with music so she began to hum, then sing into a tape recorder, then write her own jazz-inflected songs. She learned to play guitar lying on her back. Within a few years, her songs were being played on the radio in Philadelphia. She released an EP that met with success and was signed to a record label. She began touring, using a cane and wearing dark glasses to combat the acute sensitivity to light caused by the brain injury. In 2017, she moved to Paris. In the jazz world, she’s an enigmatic superstar.

In other words, Melody Gardot has seen the worst adversity life can deal and met it head on. Her song, the last in the #mysongscapes series of blogs, offers us that most elemental of comforts: optimism. That the sun will come out again in our hearts; that it will bathe us in its warmth; that it will be our light at the end of our tunnel. Spring is here, and that morning sun has come to greet us. Let me tell you, honey child.

THAT MORNING SUN (Melody Gardot, 2015)

There little babe, don’t you cry
We got that sunny morning waitin’ on us now
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel
We can be worry-free
Just take it from me
Honey child
Let me tell you now, child

That morning sun is here to greet us
With her loving light so warm
That morning sun is here to meet us
Waitin’ on the wakin’ up of everyone

She ain’t gonna quit ’till you’re smiling now
Lemme tell you, child
Lemme tell you, honey child

That morning sun
Has come to greet ya
She’s peekin’ round the corner
Just a-waitin’ just to meet ya
Shinin’ down on all your troubles
Lemme tell ya, child
Lemme tell ya, honey child

‘Cause this world was made for dreamin’
This world was made for you
This world made for believin’
In all the things you’re gonna do
Now, honey child
Lemme tell ya now, child

‘Cause this world was made for dreamin’
This world was made for you
This world made for believin’
In all the things you’re gonna do
Now, honey child
Lemme tell ya now, child

Ah, honey child,
Lemme tell ya, child
Ah… honey child
Lemme tell ya, child 

************

This is the 21st and final blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them. I haven’t run out of songs, though, so I may throw in the odd new one over the months and seasons to come.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine – a Dutch travelogue and a brilliant Broadway play
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – blue flowers in the garden
  18. My Bonny – remembering the late Laura Smith (and my dad)
  19. Up on the Roof – a Carole King love-in and a lot of green roofs
  20. Singing Malaika in the Serengeti

Singing Malaika in the Serengeti

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I have been very fortunate to travel to Africa three times. In October 2014 (my second trip), we visited South Africa as part of a garden tour hosted by Donna Dawson. Apart from visiting Table Mountain and Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden and wonderful gardens like Harold Porter National Botanical Gardens, Babylonstoren and Makaranga, we took part in a safari at the Southern Camp of Kapama Private Game Reserve. I wrote about that lovely adventure in three blogs starting here.

Kapama was adjacent to Kruger National Park and even though our time there was short (2 days), we saw an abundance of wild animals, including a black-maned lion who roused himself from sleep while we sat in our vehicle and watched.

In 2016 (my third trip), we attended a wedding at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Laikipia, north Kenya, followed by a few days on safari at a tented camp called Kicheche in Ol Pejeta Conservancy, below.

Our Kicheche guide Albert was very skilled, and I wrote a 3-part blog on our wonderful safaris at Kicheche starting here.

The most thrilling experience there – in fact one of my most exciting experiences anywhere – was watching two cheetah brothers mark territory, play and wash each other. Have a look at my YouTube video, below.

Kicheche was rustic (if a bush tent with a bathroom can be called rustic). Lewa Conservancy was different, in that it was also a festive social occasion, shared with friends from Canada and Kenya.  Here I am with Lewa’s wonderful Maasai lodge manager, Karmushu.

But it was also much more luxurious.  Thus, our beautiful Lewa Wilderness accommodation was set on the edge of a hillside leading down into a valley, with a little terrace and chairs outside. That proximity to the wild made our first night there very memorable.

Though we had spent a few days acclimatizing in the Nairobi suburb of Karen (including touring ‘Out of Africa’ writer Karen Blixen’s house) prior to flying into Lewa Downs on their own air strip….

…..we were very ready to sleep, especially given the welcoming four-poster beds in our little house, below. So I was in a dead sleep in the middle of the night when I awoke to a strange sound, like shells sliding slowly along a hard surface, very nearby. It was as if…. as if….. a large animal was dragging its paws as it settled itself onto the still warm polished concrete patio outside our shutters! “Doug!” I whispered. “There’s something outside!”  I had to call a little louder to wake him up. “Doug, listen! I think it could be… I think it’s… a lion!”  Then came the sounds again.  Lions have retractable claws on their paws! How sturdy were those windows? Had we shut the door tight?  “I’m getting into your bed,” I whispered, lifting the mosquito netting, putting my bare feet on the floor and scooting under his netting. We lay there, listening. Then there came a huge heaving sigh, just feet away “Uuuuahhhhahh.”  It had to be a lion!  We stayed awake for a long time listening, but eventually fell asleep again. By morning when we peeked out our shutters, there was no sign of our guest. We were excited to share the news with our friends under the pergola at breakfast, but before we could say anything, someone blurted out, “Hey! Did you guys see the lion this morning?”

Between wedding events, we were able to enjoy a few short game drives at Lewa.

At 62,000 acres (250 km2), it was established as a conservancy in 1995 on the site of a cattle ranch that had been owned by the Craig/Douglas family from 1922. Before becoming a conservancy, the family had established the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary to protect endangered black rhinos from poaching for their horns. It is estimated that Kenya’s black rhino population had declined from 20,000 in the mid-1970s to just a few hundred by 1986, when the sanctuary was formed by the Craigs and Mrs. Anna Merz.  We watched a mother black rhino and her calf being walked by rangers….

….. who waited while the rhinos grazed.

We saw some of Lewa’s estimated 400 migratory elephants as they came close to our vehicle…..

….. and dispersed to eat acacia foliage nearby.

We watched a critically-endangered Grévy’s zebra (Equus grevyi) – the largest living wild equid – feeding on grasses.

There were beautiful reticulated giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) browsing on thorn trees. The population of reticulated giraffes in east Africa has declined by half in the past 30 years from 36,000 to around 15,000, leading in 2018 to their ‘endangered’ designation by the IUCN. With wildlife conservancies like Lewa offering protection, their numbers are now starting to rebound.

The giraffe neck is one of nature’s miracles.  Giraffes are the tallest land mammals extant. The long neck was originally thought to have evolved in order for giraffes to compete successfully in browsing on high trees, i.e. the “competing browsers” hypothesis. But since giraffes feed during the dry season on low trees with their necks bent, as in the above photo, that theory has been challenged in favour of the “necks-for-sex” hypothesis.  Evidently, the longest, strongest necks on males — used in their ‘necking’ form of fights — help  eliminate romantic competition and therefore attract female mates.

Both hypotheses are given credence today. And whatever the case, the reticulated giraffe is a beautiful animal….

….. with a very sweet face.

I was fascinated by this video of Lewa staff working to remove a metal ring from a giraffe’s leg.

I’ve always been interested in nature’s evolutionary version of a “harem”, as with impalas, Kenya’s most common antelope species. Below we see a herd of female impalas and their dominant male.

There were vervet monkeys at Lewa, too.

The photo below shows a monkey walking the railing at Lewa Wilderness Lodge’s outdoor dining pergola, with the expanse of the beautiful conservancy behind it.

Our game drive wound around a promontory rising out of the savannah.

We saw lots of interesting birds at Lewa as well, including the beautiful superb starling, below.

The blue-naped mousebird had the familiar tuft of our male blue jays and cardinals.

Near Lewa’s abundant farm beds, there were garden areas with flowering aloes where the Hunter’s sunbird was nectaring, below.

This beautiful tapestry defines “garden” at Lewa….

And this.

I had a special tour of the Lewa farm by Will Craig. There were bananas, mangoes, papayas, citrus, pomegranates and all types of vegetables growing in rows.

Fragrant blackthorn trees (Senegalia mellifera) were in flower and alive with honey bees.

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But where’s the music here? Given that this is the 20th blog in #mysongscapes of winter 2020, we can’t just be gallivanting around African savannahs looking at elephants!

Well, that’s where my first trip to Africa comes in, way back in 2007. As a 30th anniversary gift to ourselves, we signed up for a safari to several prominent game parks in Kenya and Tanzania, including Amboseli, Ngorongoro Crater, Maasai Mara, Tarangire and the Serengeti.  It was an opportunity to be close to wild animals, like the elderly lion below taking a few moments of shade beside a safari vehicle in Ngorongoro Crater. It is also my very favourite travel experience.

Now I’m going to set the scene. We’re in the majestic Serengeti. Savannah grasses as far as the eye can see. The name “Serengeti” derives from a word used by the Maasai to describe the area, siringet.  It means “the place where the land runs on forever”

It’s ‘sundowners’ time, i.e. cocktail hour…. and our safari group has been served drinks by our wonderful guides, who hail from tribes in both Kenya and Tanzania, which is where the Serengeti is located. (I was given this small photo of Doug and me on the occasion.)

I needed my glass of wine that day, for I had resolved to sing a little song on the Serengeti. I do love to sing. Not on stage, but at family sing-alongs at the cottage on summer nights; helping to lead the carols and songs at our annual Christmas skating party; at the occasional industry karaoke party; and… loudly… in the shower. The song I had in mind was one I’d heard as a young teen in Vancouver, when my mom took me to see Harry Belafonte and his special guest singer from South Africa, Miriam Makeba. I think it was 1960, Miriam would have been 27 years old. I was transfixed by this young woman who could emanate clicks from somewhere deep in her throat, in the manner of the Xsoha language of her home country. One of the songs she sang was The Click Song.  Over the decades, Miriam Makeba would become known as ‘Mama Africa’. Most of all, I loved a song that Belafonte and Makeba sang together in Swahili – the language of Kenya and Tanzania – called ‘Malaika’, or ‘My Angel’ in English. Written by Adam Salim in 1945, it told of a young man who was sad because he didn’t have enough money for the dowry to marry his sweetheart.  It appeared a few years later on an album I bought, below.

Over the years, I played the album and sang the song over and over, until I knew the words by heart.   So on that occasion in 2007, when I’d had a few glasses of wine to give me courage, I left our group and walked over to where our guides were standing, waiting for us to finish.  “I have a song to sing to you,” I said. They laughed. “Okay!” Then I proceeded to sing all three verses of Malaika. When I finished, they burst into applause. “Mama Africa!” they cried. I was so happy (and relieved) and I sang it again the next night for our friends as we travelled in our safari van under the moonlight from a barbecue dinner on the savannah.   I don’t have a recording of that cocktail recital (thank goodness), but I do have a video I made featuring my own photos of our 2007 safari with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba singing ‘Malaika’ as soundtrack.

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MALAIKA (Adam Salim 1945, sung by Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba)

Malaika
Nakupenda malaika
Malaika
Nakupenda malaika

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Ningekuoa mali we
Ningekuoa dada
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Pesa
Zasumbua roho yangu
Pesa
Zasumbua roho yangu
Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Kidege
Hukuwaza kidege
Kidege
Hukuwaza kidege
Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio
Nashindwa na mali sina, we
Ningekuoa malaika
Nashindwa na mali sina, we
Ningekuoa malaika 
**********

This is the 20th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine – a Dutch travelogue and a brilliant Broadway play
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – blue flowers in the garden
  18. My Bonny – remembering the late Laura Smith (and my dad)
  19. Up on the Roof – a Carole King love-in and a lot of green roofs

Up on the Roof

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I adore Carole King. And I admit that I saw ‘Beautiful: The Carole King Musical’ three times: twice on Broadway (2014, 2015) and once in Toronto (2017). My favourite versions were the two that featured Canadian actor Chilina Kennedy, below, who played Carole to perfection from her teenage years in the 1960s in New York City as a young wife, mother and co-writer of hit pop songs, to the 1970s in Los Angeles and her own mega-hit album Tapestry (You’ve Got a Friend, It’s Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move, etc.)

Chilina Kennedy as Carole King in the Broadway production of ‘Beautiful – The Carole King Musical’

Like all the songs from Carole’s song-writing partnership with and marriage to Gerry Goffin (when she was 17 and he was 20), below, Carole wrote the music and Gerry penned the lyrics. From that partnership in New York’s iconic Brill Building at 1619 Broadway came songs like Take Good Care of my Baby (1961 – Bobby Vee), Will You Love me Tomorrow (1962 – The Shirelles), The Loco-Motion (1962 – Little Eva), It Might as Well Rain Until September (1962 – Carole King and Bobby Vee), Go Away Little Girl (1962 – Steve Lawrence), One Fine Day (1963 – The Chiffons), I’m Into Something Good (1964 – Herman’s Hermits), Don’t Bring Me Down (1966 – The Animals), (You Make me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (1967 – Aretha Franklin) and Pleasant Valley Sunday (1967 – The Monkees). In 1962, Carole also wrote the music for The Everly Brothers’ Crying in the Rain with a different lyricist.

Carole King and Gerry Goffin in the Brill Building, New York

One of my favourite songs from Carole King’s long career – and the one that features in this 19th #mysongscapes blog – is ‘Up on the Roof’, written in 1962 for The Drifters, below. In a Rolling Stone story about the song, Gerry Goffin recalled, “Appropriately enough, the song was born among the rat-race noise of a crowded city street.” Carole came up with the melody in the car. Gerry thought it could be about a place to be alone. Carole ventured ‘My secret place’, the song’s original title. But in time it was changed to ‘Up on the Roof’.

When Carole King was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honours in 2015 alongside President Barack and Michelle Obama, her friend James Taylor sang the song for her. (I saw Carole and James in Seattle singing the song in May 2010 during their Troubadour Tour, one of the best concerts ever).

But perhaps my favourite version of ‘Up on the Roof ‘ is this 1982 rendition by Toronto’s a cappella singing group The Nylons. I had them on cassette tapes in the 1980s, saw them in concert and knew many of their songs off by heart, singing them at the top of my lungs around the house when my kids were little. The lead singer here with the beautiful tenor is Marc Connors; tragically, within a few years, he would die of HIV- AIDS. So for me, it’s bittersweet to watch him and the three others celebrate that special place to get away from ‘the rat-race noise’ in such a proudly Canadian way.

UP ON THE ROOF (Gerry Goffin & Carole King, 1962, Screen Gems – EMI)

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me

Let me tell you now
When I come home feeling tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
I get far away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat race noise down in the street

On the roof’s the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let’s go up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling you can share it all with me
I keep on telling you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble proof
So if this world starts getting you down
There’s room enough for two , up on the roof
Up on the roof, oh come on, baby
Everything is all right
Everything is all right
Up on the roof

******

Up on the Roof in the Garden

All right. Time to finish up my Carole King love-in and move on to the garden side of my blog. If there was a rooftop that I looked at and thought, “Ah, this is a lovely place to get away from the rat-race below,” it was Clarissa Morawski’s roof deck garden in Toronto. I photographed it for a book series I was illustrating in the mid-90s. At the time, Clarissa’s career was all about the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. (Today she’s a consultant in waste minimization). And her rooftop was the perfect illustration of the three R’s. There was an actual main-sail for a sunshade; wooden crates filled with veggies and herbs; and bushel baskets filled with flowers.

While a rooftop deck with planters is a relatively conventional gardening scenario and has been around for a long time, an actual “green roof” is a bigger technological endeavor, one that North America was slow to pick up on, compared to Europe. Green roofs buffer rain water, cleanse the air and cool ambient temperatures, acting as natural air-conditioning for buildings, thus saving energy, both in winter and summer. They’re also beautiful and bring wildlife and pollinators to urban spaces. When we arrived in Amsterdam in 1999, I snapped a shot of the sedum-planted green roof spanning the departure terminal at the Schiphol Airport; at the time it was more than ten years old. The roof was recently redone by a Massachusetts firm, retrofitted with solar panels and now features a hardy succulent plant mix called “Sedum Carpet’ especially formulated for green roofs.

Later in that 1999 trip to the Netherlands, we visited a town called Alphen aan den Rijn to see an experimental Dutch model community called Ecolonia. The buildings utilized sustainable construction material; green roof technology was used, below; wetlands were restored and made a focus and a central storm retention pond became a feature. Conceived by Lucien Kroll of Belgium, it was similar in concept to the New Urbanism movement in North America.

There’s a green roof in my neighbourhood in Toronto, atop the workshop of the house owner and adjacent to the art studio used by his wife. Designed by architect David Lieberman, I photographed it in 1998 as it was being installed by my friend Terry McGlade, then managing his own green roof company called Gardens in the Sky, now part of Flynn Canada. A few years later, I came back and nervously climbed up the ladder so I could stand on the roof and photograph the now-mature plants and the resident cat. Then I wrote and illustrated a story on the roof for the magazine Gardening Life, below. The photos after that show the steps in its creation (though there are now modular components that take the place of the Styrofoam).

The roof was covered with a waterproof, single-ply EPDM membrane surrounded by a 30 cm (12 inch) high metal parapet. The perforated drainage tube would be laid around the perimeter and connected on overflow pipe.  Note that the white things on the outer wall that look like portholes are actually vents leading out from an airspace between the roof and the insulated ceiling of the workshop below, designed to keep the soil frozen in winter and the plants in dormancy.

Then an 8-10 cm (3-4 inch) layer of Styrofoam pellets was distributed, covered by filter cloth to prevent plant roots and soil from entering the drainage area.

Next, a 15-23 cm (6-9 inch) layer of lightweight, compost-rich, soilless mix was spread on and watered thoroughly.

Then a palette of low-maintence hardy perennials was planted: sedums, perennial geraniums, strawberries, phlox, thyme, calamagrostis, liatris, echinacea. Hostas were planted on the shady east side.

A few years later, I returned to check out the plants. The family cat eyed me with interest.  Everything did well except the echinacea, which seems to prefer sandier soil.

From a little flagstone path on the rooftop, I could look down on the ground-level deck below. I have learned that this rooftop had to be redone in the past year or so, which means it had a 20-year life. Presumably newer technologies would have extended that lifetime.

The sloping green roof atop the Dembroski Centre for Horticulture at the Toronto Botanical Garden was planted in 2005 by Terry McGlade. At slightly more than 2400 square feet, it was a critical factor in the TBG gaining a Silver LEED designation for the building itself. The plants used on the initial roof planting are a combination of drought-tolerant sedum species: Sedum album, S. sexangulare, S. spurium and S. kamtschaticum.

The flat part of the TBG’s green roof features native wildflowers such as penstemons, coreopsis and other meadow-like, drought-tolerant perennials.

The TBG also has a small straw-bale building with a sloping green roof.

It features prairie grasses, coreopsis (C. lanceolata), columbines (Aquilegia canadensis), hairy penstemon (P. hirsutus) and…

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…. the occasional nesting goose.

I photographed the 3rd floor rooftop herb garden of the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver back in 2010 for a story I was proposing on urban beekeeping.

I loved walking through the garden, which evidently saved the kitchen thousands of dollars each year in herb costs.

I was able to sample those herbs in a honey-themed lunch served to me by the Fairmont.

But my real interest in the Fairmont’s green roof was the apiary set in a miniature meadow overlooking Vancouver’s Coal Harbour. At the time, it featured beautiful hives hand-painted by students at Emily Carr College of Art. Alas, the meadow also harboured ground nests of yellow-jacket wasps that frightened guests (unlike the honey bees) so the following year the meadow was removed and replaced with a conventional garden that was not nearly so appealing. Note the Vancouver Convention Centre across the street; I’ll get to that green roof in a minute.

I did a big photo shoot of Graeme Evans, the hotel’s beekeeper, who at the time was also Head of Housekeeping. He had proposed the apiary to the Fairmont chain and was a natural with the bees, never wearing protective gear as he checked the frames or harvested honey.

The resulting story, which also featured profiles of beekeepers in Chicago and Atlanta, was published in a 2012 edition of Organic Gardening magazine. Alas, like a lot of other gardening magazines, it is no longer around. (Yes, that’s a queen bee surrounded by her worker nurse bees in my photo of a brood frame from the hives at the hotel.)

Back to the convention centre. At the time, this was the largest green roof in North America, at 6 acres (2.4 hectares). It was planted with 400,000 native British Columbia plants from 25 species.  To achieve a west coast meadow look, there were 40,000 bulbs, including nodding onion (Allium cernuum) and camas (Camassia quamash) plus 128 kilograms of flower and grass seed, including Idaho fescue (Festuca idahoensis), red fescue (F. rubra) and sheep fescue (F. vulgaris). As well, 80,000 sedums were planted on the hottest part of the roof on the west side. It has become a haven for nesting birds and a rich foraging site for pollinator insects.

The Hugh Garner Housing Cooperative green roof in Toronto was featured on a Garden Bloggers’ Fling tour in 2015. The South Roof, then 5 years old, featured a combination of raised planter boxes and actual green roof technology beds to produce a beautiful space for residents, with pergolas and community garden space.

There was a photo display showing the engineering processes used to build the roof. The specifications from the project’s web page include a “Cold Applied Rubber roofing membrane with ILD leak detection system; polyethylene sheet root barrier….

…. 4″ extruded polystyrene rigid insulation; 2″ Pontarolo storm water reservoir; filter cloth; and ballast consisting of reused concrete pavers, wood decks, planters and planting beds (ranging from 6″ – 18″ in depth).”

Interestingly, the architect on the Hugh Garner project was Monica Kuhn, a founding member of Toronto’s Rooftop Gardens Resource Group. I photographed her own little Cabbagetown rooftop way back in the mid-90s for my newspaper column. I remember that she cautioned me to be careful because she didn’t have her railings up yet!

I wrote a blog a few years ago about Siri Luckow’s lovely garden in Toronto. Her garage features a green roof and while touring the garden with fellow bloggers, we climbed a ladder, as my friend Sara Katz is doing below…..

…. to photograph the textural meadow that grows on the roof.

During that bloggers’ fling, we also toured gardens on Ward’s Island in Toronto and I liked the effort put into the miniature green roof on this toolshed.

In 2017, a sodden morning of rain didn’t deter these media folks previewing the Toronto Botanical Garden’s garden tour route from trying to get a better view of the green roof over a garage at one of the gardens.

I found my telephoto lens worked well to take a closer look. I see lots of bearded irises up there!

In 2018, during a symposium in Chicago with my Garden Communicators (Gardencomm) group in Chicago, I was privileged to visit a 25,000-square-foot rooftop farm at McCormick Place West,  run by the Windy City Harvest program out of Chicago Botanic Garden.

In this garden, apprenticeship graduates from the program work with Savor (the building’s food service operators) to focus on rare heirloom crop production and rooftop-appropriate varieties of vegetables, native fruits, herbs, hops and edible flowers. The rooftop farm features microgreens production, honey bee hives and vermicompost bins.

Some of the Windy City Harvest produce also goes to a local farmers’ market.

I’ll end my musings on ‘Up on the Roof’ with one of the most famous green roofs in North America – though many visitors might not guess that Chicago’s beautiful Lurie Garden and Millennium Park are actually “situated over a network of underground parking garages, pedways, and commuter electric train lines”. As the Lurie website says, “This unique engineering and location situation presents special, but manageable, plant care challenges. Visitors are often surprised by the presence of large, mature trees in Lurie Garden given its relatively shallow soil depth and construction as a rooftop garden. Horticulturalists at the garden have become highly skilled in managing plant growth and development in the challenging environment of a rooftop garden.”

I’ve blogged about the Lurie and would invite you to have a look at this fabulous urban meadow designed by Piet Oudolf.

******

This is the 19th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine – a Dutch travelogue and a brilliant Broadway play
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – blue flowers in the garden
  18. My Bonny – remembering the late Laura Smith (and my dad)

My Bonny – Remembering Laura Smith

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2

Today’s blog, the 18th in the #mysongscapes series of winter 2020, honours  East Coast singer Laura Smith and her beautiful rendition of a traditional song that was part of my own childhood. Laura died of cancer yesterday in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. I offer this in her memory, and in memory of my dad.

When I was a little girl, my father sang the traditional Scottish version of this song to me. Maybe it was a lullaby; maybe it was just one of the many songs he sang or whistled around the house. (I’m a whistler, too, and I have a whistling son, which makes me inordinately happy.)  “My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea, my bonnie lies over the ocean, oh bring back my bonnie to me.” My little sister’s name is Bonnie, so the song got lots of play in our house over the years.  My father died in 1995, not long after the photo of us, below, was taken. Coincidentally, that was the year that Laura Smith released her award-winning album B’Tween the Earth and My Soul.

Laura’s version on that album was moody and even a little haunting.  She called it ‘My Bonny’ and it hinted at the sad end of a love affair and her own determination to move on.  But it also seemed to celebrate the wild east coast… “someone’s got a kite on the wind…”.  Although I saw Laura Smith in Toronto acting in a play, I never saw her perform this song.  But we have my friend Duke Lang’s (paganmaestro) beautiful video version with evocative images illustrating her unique voice. Here is the late Laura Smith singing ‘My Bonny’.

MY BONNY (Laura Smith, 1995 from the album B’Tween the Earth and My Soul)

My bonny lies over the ocean
My bonny lies over the sea
My bonny lies over the ocean
Bring back my bonny to me 

The leaves haven’t even started fallin’
Already there’s such a chill in the air
Someone’s got a kite on the wind, maiden calling
Well I’ve got a tramp’s whisker that tells me you still care

So bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny to me
Yeah, bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny to me

Soon there’ll be no difference between the land and the water
I can walk on the ice to places I’ve never been
When I get as far as I can go, oh I’m gonna turn
And throw my cares over my shoulder
Along with your memory
I’ll just let it all float down the Gulf Stream

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My bonny lies over the ocean
Come on bring back, bring back my bonny to me

Yeah, bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny to me
Yeah, bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny
Bring back my bonny, yeah
Bring back my bonny to me 

********

This is the 18th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – a psychedelic hymn that lets me celebrate blue flowers in the garden

Crystal Blue Persuasion

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When I jotted down a list of songs for #mysongscapes, a second ‘psychedelic’ song by Tommy James and the Shondells (after Crimson and Clover in my previous blog praising the pea family) easily made the list. It hit the charts when I was in my early 20s and became a kind of symbol of the anti-war, drug-fuelled, free love, counter-culture atmosphere of the late 1960s. It had an infectious introduction with its bongo drums and flamenco guitar and the lyrics seemed to me just a hippie-dippie celebration of everything that was changing in Vietnam era society. It wasn’t until I looked into the meaning of the lyrics this winter that I discovered what Tommy James intended – which was likely the direct opposite of the pastiche of images in the music video below (viewed more than 11 million times).  I’ll get to the real meaning at the end of this blog. Meanwhile, the song offers a great musical introduction to my own version of bewitching ‘crystal blue persuasion’ in the garden.

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Blue in the Garden

I’ve never had to be persuaded to use blue flowers in my garden. That colour is a favourite of mine as it is for many gardeners. Crystals… now that’s a different thing. The closest I’ve come to coveting a crystal is an indigo-blue gazing globe. (And yes, that’s me reflected with my camera.)

As for flowers, a burst of blue hits my garden pretty early in the season, when the little Siberian squill (Scilla sibirica) comes into flower.  I try to appreciate each little blossom…..

….. even though it tends to flower in big carpets of blue.  I wrote a blog on how this exotic bulb attracts loads of native cellophane bees to my spring garden.

Around the same time as the Siberian squill flowers, drifts of blue glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa) also begin to bloom. I love it when they nudge into my pink ‘George Baker’ Corydalis sempervirens.

If you have a shady spot, it’s easy to ‘persuade’ blue lungwort to take up residence. This is the very cultivar Pulmonaria ‘Blue Ensign’.

Grape hyacinths always bring a grape-scented touch of blue into the spring garden, but Muscari aucheri ‘Dark Eyes’ combines all the blues.

The veronica or speedwell clan boasts a lot of blues into lavender-blues. Among the earliest to flower is the groundcover Veronica umbrosa ‘Georgia Blue’.  It is often seen in rock gardens.

Where would the spring garden be without the frothy supporting role played by blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica)? Answer: nowhere near as beautiful!

I often wish I still lived on Canada’s mild west coast (for a lot of reasons), but the ability to grow the various Ceanothus shrubs (California lilac) is a compelling one. This blue lovely is the bee-friendly hybrid Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’.

Speaking of bees, there are lots of blue flowers that attract bees and I’ve had fun capturing the buzz.

Soon after the “little blue bulbs” of spring, there are a few blue-flowered perennials. One that has become deservedly popular is Siberian bugloss or Brunnera macrophylla. This is ‘Jack Frost’.

It makes a good companion to a host of mid-spring bulbs and perennials. I liked this pairing with the white form of Greek windflower (Anemone blanda ‘White Splendour’).

Speaking of “blue and white”, I’ve also spent time focusing my lens on some crisp, seersucker-like combinations of blue and white flowers from spring to autumn, below.

Top row, left to right: Anemone blanda ‘White Splendour’ with Siberian squill; Narcissus ‘Thalia’ with grape hyacinths; star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum nutans) with forget-me-nots; white bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis ‘Alba’).
Second row: blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) and ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ peony; Evolvulus ‘Blue My Mind’ with white verbena and Thunbergia alata ‘Sunrise White‘; white spider flower (Cleome spinosa ‘White Queen’) with Salvia farinacea ‘Victoria Blue’; dropwort (Filipendula  vulgaris) with catmint (Nepeta x faassenii ‘Blue Wonder’).
Third row: Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) with white blazing star (Liatris spicata ‘Floristan White’); white swamp mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos ‘Blue River II’) against a blue wall; Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) with flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata); fall snakeroot (Actaea simplex) with fall monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’).

 

A groundcover spring perennial that is not very hardy in my climate but seen a lot in milder regions is Cappadocian navelwort (Omphalodes cappadocica).

Similarly, I enjoy photographing sky-blue Lithodora diffusa ‘Grace Ward’ in Vancouver in the spring, but wouldn’t chance it in my own cold Toronto climate.

An azure-blue star of mid-late spring borders or wildflower plantings in the northeast is Virginia bluebell (Mertensia virginica).

Though a spring ephemeral (it disappears after blooming), it makes a big impact when in flower, as it is here with yellow wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum).

On a June garden tour one year, I was entranced by this semi-shaded planting of indigo-blue columbines (Aquilegia vulgaris) and Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium caeruleum).

For those in cool summer regions (Alaska, British Columbia, Maritime Canada and the U.S.), there is nothing more alluring in part shade than the brilliant, blue flowers of the Himalayan blue poppy (Meconopsis baileyi).

When I was at New York’s High Line one June, I was impressed with the tidy, mounding manner and clear-blue flowers of Amsonia ‘Blue Ice’. It also turns a nice golden-yellow in fall.

Nothing says ‘romance’ in the early summer garden like delphiniums. They come in a range of heights and colours from pure white to dark purple (often with contrasting “eyes”), but for a hit of sky-blue you cannot beat the ‘Blue Bird Group’.

Many veronicas or speedwells range into blue hues but none is as vibrant as June-blooming Veronica austriaca ssp. teucrium ‘Crater Lake Blue’.

When I was in Denver last June, I was mesmerized by this foothill penstemon cultivar (Penstemon heterophyllus) called, appropriately, ‘Electric Blue’.

Although they don’t last long in my garden (they’re known to be “short-lived”), I do adore the silky, little flowers of blue flax (Linum perenne var. lewisii).

People who live in Texas might ask “where are the bluebonnets”. Indeed! Though I wouldn’t recommend a species so niche-specific, even if it’s a gorgeous spring wildflower, I will say that, generally, there are lots of lupine species that kick up the blue quotient in any garden by several notches.  And yes, depending on where you live, there is probably a native lupine for you. Wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) is mine, and though they’re usually more purplish, sometimes I get a sky-blue one in my meadows — and the bumble bees adore them.

They’re a reason we have a colour called gentian blue…. If you look at the intense colour of trumpet gentian (G. acaulis), it’s easy to understand why. In fact, many gentian species make wonderful ‘blue garden’ stars.

In my own Toronto pollinator island garden, I like the soft effect of long-flowering, lavender-blue Nepeta x faassenii ‘Blue Wonder’, shown here in June with purplish meadow sage Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’.

Although the globe thistles often read a little too lavender-blue for me to include here, there is one I like called Echinops bannaticus ‘Blue Pearl’.   Isn’t it lovely?

And here it is at Montreal Botanical Garden in a soft, blue cloud of Greek catmint (Nepeta parnassica).

The sea holly hybrid Eryngium x zabelii ‘Big Blue’ is very striking, and easily-grown in well-drained soil in a sunny spot.  Don’t overwater it or it will sprawl.

The sub-shrub Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) has become deservedly popular over the past few decades with its small, light blue flowers. Here it is with ‘White Swan’ coneflower (Echinacea) in the background.

I grow tender and borderline-hardy sages in pots to attract hummingbirds and the hybrid below was new for me last year. Bred by Betsy Clebsch, it’s called ‘Big Swing’ and my ruby-throated hummer gave it the seal of approval (but not as popular as the Argentine sages, especially S. guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’).
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Gentian sage (Salvia patens) is not hardy for me, but it’s perennial in warm places. This is the sky-blue cultivar ‘Cambridge Blue’.

Bog sage (Salvia uliginosa) is a wonderful late summer perennial for soil that can be kept reasonably moist. It’s also a bee favourite!

The late summer-early autumn blue of leadwort (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is almost startling in its intensity, thus its other name hardy plumbago.

The latest perennial to flower in my garden is autumn monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’).  In fact, I have one clump that reaches its peak bloom just as my Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) is changing colour from chartreuse to bright apricot. Autumn monkhood flowers are “indigo-blue”, a deep shade of purplish-blue that gets its name from the natural plant dye originally used for blue jeans.

Beyond perennials, there are a few hardy shrubs that can add a touch of blue to the garden. In late summer, blue mist bush (Caryopteris x clandonensis) makes a beautiful companion to pink border sedums and goldenrod.  And the bees love it!

Mophead hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) are familiar to gardeners and feature many blue-flowered cultivars. In milder regions, you see them as beautiful hedges but they can be stunning in planters and urns, as well – especially at Easter time when every greengrocer has pots of them, along with Easter lilies. This is my beautiful neighbour Judith’s blue front door in spring. She keeps her hydrangeas watered for months as they age to delicious shades of olive-green and deep navy-blue.

Then there are all the tender plants…. bulbs, annuals, tropicals with blue flowers. Lily-of-the-nile (Agapanthus africanus) is a bulb that makes a strong exclamation point in the summer garden.  Sadly, it’s not hardy for me – unlike New Zealand, where it’s considered an invasive weed!

If you’ve grown borage (Borago officinalis) in your herb garden, you’ll know how crazy the bees are for the nectar in its sky blue flowers.

Another bee-favourite summer annual is also the ingredient in a lot of wildflower mixes, along with corn poppies and other European natives. Blue cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) has intense, azure-blue flowers atop willowy stems.

I photographed Chinese forget-me-nots (Cynoglossum amabile) in spring at UC Berkeley Botanic Garden, where they combined nicely with the little yellow Kamchatka stonecrop (Sedum kamtschaticum).

Who doesn’t love morning glory? Especially the bluest of them all, Ipomoea tricolor ‘Heavenly Blue’!  Yes, the flowers do close in the afternoon, but for the cost of a few plump seeds, you can have a twining treasure like the vignette below.

I’ve never had much luck with blue pimpernel (Anagallis monelii), even as a pot annual. I’ve seen it used in springtime in California, which tells me our hot, humid summers do not agree with it. But those navy-blue flowers…. swoon!

Lobelia! Even your grandmother loved annual lobelia (L. erinus).  Nothing adds a shock of blue to a pot or basket like this frothy annual. But keeping it looking vigorous for a long time is a challenge. It likes regular feeding and a summer cut-back to revive it. Here it is with salmon ivy geraniums (Pelargonium), frothy yellow bidens and white bacopa (Sutera cordata).

Baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii) has all the colours of a summer sky. It’s another cool weather California native annual that turns up its toes in a hot northeastern summer.

Not only does it have the prettiest common name of any annual, love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) has intricate blue (or white) flowers that self-seed in conditions they like. Its seedpods are pretty in dried flower bouquets.

If you’ve spent time in tropical climates, you will undoubtedly have seen blue plumbago (P. auriculata) clambering over walls or trained as a vine. Though an evergreen shrub in warm regions (it’s native to South Africa, thus its other name, “cape leadwort”), it also makes a good container subject in summer gardens in colder regions.

I’m going to close my blue flowers ‘persuasion’ with a Texas species whose many selected varieties range from powder-blue to deep indigo-blue (all with a touch of purple), mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea).  But the one that says “blue” most clearly to me is the light, lavender-blue one in the photo below, from Montreal Botanical Garden. It’s called ‘Fairy Queen’, and it is combined with S. farinacea ‘Evolution’ (dark purple-blue), fragrant purple heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) and brilliant chartreuse sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas ‘Illusion Emerald Lace’)

*******

And now for those song lyrics.  In 1969, like a lot of 60s era rockers, Tommy James was in the grips of addiction, both to alcohol and drugs. His bottom, he said in an interview, came in a Holiday Inn motel when he opened the desk drawer to find a Gideon bible. He opened Ezekiel and, as he said, read the greatest UFO story in history. He said he knew “God was talking to him”, that God was “in the now”. He took the bible away and three months later wrote a song while listening to Billy Graham on television, He said he “got saved” that night as he “found Jesus”. In 1986, he went into the Betty Ford Center to dry out from pills and alcohol. So my song today, to my surprise (as a formerly religious person, now an atheist) is actually a psychedelic ‘hymn’ about “becoming a Christian”.  Here are the lyrics.

CRYSTAL BLUE PERSUASION (Eddie Morley Gray, Mike Vale, Tommy James, 1969)

Look over yonder
What do you see?
The sun is a’rising
Most definitely

A new day is coming, ooh, ooh
People are changing
Ain’t it beautiful, ooh, ooh
Crystal blue persuasion

Better get ready to see the light
Love, love is the answer, ooh, ooh
And that’s all right

So don’t you give up now, ooh, ooh
So easy to find
Just look to your soul
And open your mind

Crystal blue persuasion, mmm, mmm
It’s a new vibration
Crystal blue persuasion
Crystal, blue persuasion

Maybe tomorrow
When he looks down
On every green field, ooh, ooh
And every town
All of his children
And every nation
They’ll be peace and good brotherhood

Crystal blue persuasion, yeah
Crystal blue persuasion, aha
Crystal blue persuasion, aha
Crystal blue persuasion, aha

*********

This is the 17th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico