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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’)

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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

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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

Mexico

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I adore Mexico. Counting my honeymoon in Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta in the dark ages (1977), we’ve visited Zihuatanejo, Sayulita, Manzanillo, Cozumel (including return visits to a few of those places) a dozen times. This week, we’re celebrating the milestone birthdays of three family members in Playa del Carmen, an hour from Cancun. It’s our first time here, and a way to discover a little more about a country we’ve come to love, despite all the bad press it gets. We’ve only found friendly people, beautiful beaches — like the one below, in the state of Colima, wonderful food, interesting flora, and a welcome escape from winter.

About those beaches, there are wild beaches too, like the ones on the east side of Cozumel in the state of Quintana Roo….

…. where the ocean hurls itself up through yawning holes in the limestone.

In Sayulita in the state of Jalisco, the waves pound the shore relentlessly, washing over the boulders buried in the sand.

Sometimes there are good books….

….. and sometimes not much of anything…..

…..except watching the iguanas going in and out of their hiding places in the rocks…..

….or a pelican taking off to catch fish.

We’ve stayed in some ‘interesting’ places, like this hilltop casa straight from the 1980s in Sayulita….

…. with its rather precarious hammock perch and so many steps to get down to the beach we considered it all the exercise we needed.

We’re not really “all-inclusive” people, but we’ve stayed in three. This was Casa Velas in Marina Vallarta, a neighbourhood of Puerto Vallarta….

….. and it had pet peacocks wandering around that would come right into your room, if you let them.

This was the view from Meliá Cozumel, a Spanish-owned all-inclusive on our first trip to Cozumel.

Perhaps the most dramatic stay was in a rented house overlooking Manzanillo Bay with a lovely outdoor dining table….

…. and a spectacular view of the sun rising over the bay. That beach down there, by the way….

…. is where Bo Derek made her spectacular exit from the water in the movie ‘10’.

There were trips with an ecological flavour, like this stop at a turtle sanctuary in Colima, near Manzanillo, where we escorted baby turtles to the ocean…..

….. and later learned how sea salt is harvested at Lagoon Cuyutlán….

….. and the value of the adjacent mangrove ecosystem to all kinds of wildlife.

My artist son could often be found with his sketchpad, pencil and watercolours…..

…. capturing a particularly lovely scene.

We’ve done some snorkel trips on very nice boats, like this one in Cozumel….

…. and some on simpler affairs with questionable lifejackets and all-you-can-drink tequila!

On one stay in Cozumel we were lucky to climb down a ladder from our deck right into the area where abundant fish were swimming in fairly shallow water, including slender barracudas that swam past without batting an eye.

On one occasion, my eldest son treated the family to a sunset sailing trip.

The handsome brothers posed for their mom.

And, of course ,there was a sunset!

On both the Pacific coast and in Yucatan, we love watching the sunsets, like this one in Puerto Vallarta….

…. and this one setting behind people walking on a pier in Cozumel.

When winter is still flexing its muscles at home, this is a lovely way to end the day.

And food! I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to buy a big, ripe papaya (the ones on the tree below do not qualify as ripe) at the town market and enough limes to squeeze on top for breakfast each morning. Heaven – and unlike any papaya you’ve tasted in Canada or the U.S.

When we stayed in Sayulita one year, the hotel’s banana plant was laden with fruit.

No Mexican vacation is complete without fresh pico de gallo, or salsa fresco. With taco chips, of course!

Coconut shrimp at Casa Mission in Cozumel was accompanied by a…..

….. mariachi trio, who sang my husband’s very favourite Spanish song. If we’ve been to Mexico a dozen times, we’ve probably heard at least a half-dozen mariachi groups sing this one.

When we stayed in Manzanillo, the accommodation came with a very accomplished cook who made us delicious crab salad….

…. and traditional sopa de tortilla (chicken tortilla soup).  Even back home in Canada, that is one of our favourite Mexican dishes.

At our hotel in Puerto Vallarta one winter, I just had to photograph these perfect huevos benedictinos!

Mexico is known for its fish, of course. A lovely picnic lunch at our place in Cozumel included this grilled grouper with rice and vegetables.
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Mexican flora?  Yes, of course! Almost any place where the ocean meets the shore is where you’ll find sea grape (Coccoloba uvifera), which is native to coastal beaches throughout the Caribbean.

On the wild east side of Cozumel, I found a perfect ‘nature’s garden’ of seaside (littoral) plants. The one nearest is sea lavender (Heliotropium gnaphalodes); the bright green one behind is seaside tansy (Borrichia frutescens).

I found native bees on the seaside tansy.

And palms are everywhere, of course.

At our rental in Manzanillo, there were pots of beautiful tropical flowers, like desert rose (Adenium obsesum)……

….. which was the perfect colour for my hair adornment!

Bougainvillea is everywhere in Mexico, and so entrancing in its rainbow of colours.

One thing we haven’t done in Mexico is shop in stores that you might find in any big city in North America. But I did love this little water garden at the mall near our hotel in Puerto Vallarta.

We first visited Puerto Vallarta on our honeymoon in 1977 and it was still a small town. Now it’s a big centre with lots of development and airplane access daily from Toronto and many other centres in the U.S. When we last visited, we enjoyed the opportunity to have lunch at a beach restaurant with my old friend….

…. landscape architect Tom Sparling, right, and his partner Tom Reynolds, left.  Like a lot of Canadians, they have made their winter home in Puerto Vallarta.

And we finally got to the Vallarta Botanical Gardens on our last visit to Mexico in 2018….

….. where we met my Facebook friend Lisa McCleery. Originally from Toronto, Lisa now lives full-time in the little town of El Tuito, near Puerto Vallarta.

The botanical garden is quite wonderful, with a wealth of tropical plants….

…. and beautifully displayed succulents.

The accessories in the garden are exquisite.

We ate a delicious lunch in the Visitors’ Center, which has a nice shop and comfy chairs…

…. overlooking the jungle.  It was a truly lovely day…. and I owe the garden a comprehensive blog.

One of the reasons we’ve spent so many winter vacations enjoying Mexico is that someone I know quite well had the very good sense to have a birthday in the last week in February.

And this week, we’re celebrating that occasion once again, as well as the milestone birthdays of two of my sons. It is a family celebration in a part of the world we’ve come to love… Playa del Carmen…. with the amazing blues of the Gulf of Mexico as it meets the Yucatan Peninsula…

and its stunning beaches and attractions.

Viva Mexico!

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So…. #mysongscapes always require a suitable song to accompany the photos. That’s no problem for me! Not with James Taylor and his 1975 song Mexico.

MEXICO

Way down here, you need a reason to move
Feel a fool, running your stateside games
Lose your load, leave your mind behind Baby James

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so simple I just got to go
The sun’s so hot I forgot to go home
Guess I’ll have to go now

Americano got the sleepy eye
But his body’s still shaking like a live wire
Sleepy señorita with the eyes on fire

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low
The moon’s so bright like to light up the night
Make everything all right

Baby’s hungry and the money’s all gone
The folks back home don’t want to talk on the phone
She gets a long letter, sends back a postcard
Times are hard

Oh, down in Mexico
I never really been so I don’t really know
Oh, Mexico
I guess I’ll have to go

Oh, Mexico
I never really been but I’d sure like to go
Oh, Mexico
I guess I’ll have to go now

Talking ’bout in Mexico
In a honky tonk down in Mexico
Oh, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico
Oh, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico
Oh, Mexico
Mexico, Mexico

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This is the 16th 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 it.

  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

Crimson and Clover (and Other Legumes)

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My music tastes tend towards singer-songwriters from the 1960s and 70s with heartfelt lyrics, great musicality and understandable messages. But I do have a bit of a soft spot for a few psychedelic tunes from the late 1960s. I’m thinking of the year 1968 – that’s me in the grainy 1968 shot, below. I wasn’t exactly a flower child in my workaday high heels and Carnaby Street-inspired coat, but I did know how to wield a daisy.

Do you remember this one by Tommy James & the Shondells from 1968?   I loved it. I can still remember the strobe lights pulsing on the dance floor to the words “Cri-m-m-m-m-m-son and cl-o-o-o-o-o-o-ver o-o-o-o-o-over and o-o-o-o-o-over”.  Turn your speakers up!

CRIMSON AND CLOVER (Peter Lucia, Tommy James – Sony/ATV 1968)

Ah, now I don’t hardly know her
But I think I could love her
Crimson and clover

Ah when she comes walking over
Now I’ve been waitin’ to show her
Crimson and clover over and over

Yeah, my, my such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover over and over

Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over

They weren’t exactly genius lyrics, were they? And such bad grammar: “I don’t hardly know her.”   Turns out the song didn’t have a lot of meaning, it was just some words that came to songwriter Tommy James. As he said in an interview with Songfacts:  “They were just two of my favorite words that came together. Actually, it was one morning as I was getting up out of bed, and it just came to me, those two words. And it sounded so poetic. I had no idea what it meant, or if it meant anything. They were just two of my favorite words”.  But there’s something about the cadence of the song and the very cool tremolo on the chorus that still sends me back to the 60s!

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So, it’s now more than a half-century later.  I’m pretty sure when I was dancing at the Daisy nightclub or The Pink Pussycat or  Oil Can Harry’s in Vancouver in the late 1960s and early 1970s,  I couldn’t have imagined myself writing about psychedelia FIFTY YEARS LATER. But that’s what happens, apparently; one ages. Those lyrics never did mean anything to me, but “clover” means a lot. CLOVER, after all, can make its own nitrogen!

As we learn on Etymology Online, “ ‘clover’ is a plant of the genus Trifolium, widely cultivated as fodder, Middle English claver, from Old English clafre, clæfre  ‘clover’, from Proto-Germanic klaibron (source also of Old Saxon kle, Middle Low German klever, Middle Dutch claver, Dutch klaver, Old High German kleo, German Klee) which is of uncertain origin”.

Hmmm. Uncertain origin. I hate it when you get through all the linguistic roots only to find that no one really knows how “clover” came to be.  Trifolium means “three leaves”, and except for the lucky four-leafed clover, that’s a good key for the clover genus. Perennial Dutch clover (Trifolium repens), which would be “claver” in the Netherlands where it is native (as well as the rest of Europe and Central Asia), has been grown as forage and fodder for centuries. It now grows throughout the world as a lawn weed. Bees love it, like this bumble bee foraging for nectar on the tiny white florets.

It is also a favourite of honey bees, and clover honey is one of the most common honeys. Interestingly, Dutch clover nectar is produced abundantly in the morning but not in the afternoon, so honey bees know when to forage.

Red clover or meadow clover (Trifolium pratense) is also native to Europe but is also found throughout the temperate world as a weed.

Alsike clover (Trifolium hybridum) usually has bi-colour pink-and-white florets. It is found in pasture seed mixes, along with grasses, as a hay crop or forage for animals, especially horses.  Despite its name, it is a true species, though it was originally believed to be a hybrid of T. repens and T. pratense.

During a visit to the wonderful Montreal Botanical Garden one June, I was impressed with a design for a bee-friendly lawn of mixed clovers, instead of a weed-free lawn with no appeal to pollinators.  (However, last March in Chile I did walk barefoot through a clover lawn with painful consequences.  Sadly, the honey bee gave her life.)

The clover that comes closest to Tommy James’s lyrics is crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum), also called Italian clover. Native to most of Europe, it is rarely seen where I live in Canada. I found a single plant in the vegetable garden at Vancouver’s UBC Botanical Garden

There are other plants that we call clovers. White sweet clover (Melilotus albus) is a tall plant with wand-like branching. It is native to Eurasia but widely distributed throughout the world.

Apart from its use as a forage crop, it is also an excellent honey plant.

At my cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, it grows as a drought-tolerant weed in my sandy soil. I thought it looked quite fetching with hoary vervain (Verbena stricta) that I seeded in that area.

Yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis) is another North American “weed” that is native to Eurasia. In Toronto, I found it mixed with red clover.

All the clovers are legumes, members of the pea family Fabaceae (formerly Leguminosae).  The trait that most legumes have in common is their ability to ‘fix’ nitrogen from the soil via various types of rhizobium bacteria that dwell within small growths on their roots called nodules. Nitrogen (N2) is the most abundant gas in earth’s atmosphere and is needed by all living things, but in its gaseous state it cannot be utilized by plants or animals. Animals absorb it in the form of NH4, ammonium or other nitrates in amino acids and proteins directly from  certain plants that they eat,  or from plant-eating animals that they eat. In plants, N2 is fixed via ‘diazotroph’ bacteria like the various types of rhizobia in legumes; many other plant families use different types of free-living soil bacteria, such as frankia (e.g. for alders), to fix nitrogen.  Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) also fix nitrogen (e.g. for gunnera).

Fabaceae is a huge family, with some 670 temperate and tropical genera ranging from small annuals to massive trees.  Because of their efficient nitrogen fixation, many legumes are grown as crops to produce food for domestic animals or humans.

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is one of those legumes. In Europe it’s called ‘lucerne’ and it’s been used for grazing, hay and silage for at least two thousand years, since the Greeks and Romans.   It can also be used as a green cover crop to improve the fertility of the soil. When we were visiting my son-in-law’s Alberta farm one summer, he ‘treated’ me to a trip on an ATV to go through their fields.

This was the easy part. There were no knee-high thistles as we approached the hayfield.

I was captivated by all the alfalfa  growing in the fields.

In some places, Alsike clover was mixed in.

The alfalfa bloomed in shades of purple, lilac-blue, mauve…..

….. and white.

I saw bees and dragonflies using the flowers for forage and rest.

A VALENTINE TO FABACEAE

The rest of #mysongscapes blog is just an illustrated love letter to some favourite members of the family Fabaceae.

Bird vetch or tufted vetch (Vicia cracca) is a weedy legume that grows in all the temperate climates of the world. Here it is nitrifying the soil with Dutch clover in a weedy patch in Toronto.

But it is a superb bee plant. In five minutes, I watched honey bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees foraging on it.

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Scientists have long studied nitrogen fixation in one of my favourite little leguminous weeds, birds-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).  It is currently fixing nitrogen all over the edges of my meadows and garden beds at Lake Muskoka.

I wrote about lupines (Lupinus spp.) in a recent #mysongscapes blog about Miss Rumphius.  Aside from being a way to ‘make the world more beautiful’, as Miss Rumphius counselled,  they also add nitrogen to the soil.

I’ve never managed to grow purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) in my meadows, but not for want of trying, via seed-sowing.  Have a look at that orange pollen!

I don’t grow annual sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus), much as I would love to. They don’t fit into the way I garden – and my soil isn’t sweet enough for lime-lovers like them – but I do adore burying my nose in their blossoms.

However, even if I wanted to, I could not get rid of everlasting(!) pea (Lathyrus latifolius) that scrambles all over the plants in the meadows at my cottage. Fortunately, the bees like it. Here it is using blue flag iris (I. versicolor) as a trellis.

There’s a beautiful stand of leadplant (Amorpha canescens) in the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border (my blog) at the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG). The bees are always all over it, too.

An ornamental clover called red feathers  (Trifolium rubens), below …..

…. was used by Piet Oudolf in the TBG’s Entry Border. Though it looked lovely with meadow sage and phlomis and is supposed to be hardy to USDA Zone 3, it did not seem to come back in subsequent years.

Speaking of the TBG, I’ve always loved this Kirilow’s indigo shrub (Indigofera kirilowii) that grows on the Westlake Terrace there. It turns bright yellow in autumn.

And I’m always keen to see the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) trees come into flower in the TBG’s Nature’s Garden….

….. where they attract all kinds of native bees. This is the unequal cellophane bee (Colletes inaequalis).

The TBG’s wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) vine is loaded with pendulous inflorescences each spring.

 Laburnum (Laburnum x watereri ‘Vossii’) produces masses of long, yellow inflorescences, giving it the common name golden chain tree.

I always look forward to the first week in June in Toronto when you can smell the night-time fragrance of the black locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacias).  Bees love them too.

And at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery where I have spent hundreds of hours over the past few decades (my blog), it is a fine June indeed when the yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea) graces us with its long white inflorescences (something it only does every 2 or 3 years).

Various beans, peas and other legumes such as peanuts, soybeans, lentils and chickpeas are good sources of vegetable protein and the basis of vegetarian diets. There are lots of different pea varieties (Pisum sativum), of course, but I loved this dwarf type growing on the patio table at Rob Proctor and David Macke’s Denver garden (my blog).

Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more nitrogen you absorb. (Haha, fooled you!) I liked seeing scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) growing on a corn ‘trellis’ with squash underplanted (the “three sisters” in indigenous culture) at Wanuskewin Heritage Park outside Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (my blog).

Broad bean or fava bean (Vicia faba) is grown around the world, and is also excellent bee forage.

For me, chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) are the ingredient in my homemade hummus (no tahini, magic ingredients are 1 can (2 cups) of chickpeas drained, 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1/4 cup of lemon juice, 2 cloves of garlic crushed,  1/4 cup of parsley, 1 tsp. of salt, dash cayenne).  Whiz until smooth. Refrigerate. You’re welcome.

Then there are the subtropical and tropical legumes like Acacia, Senegalia and Vachellia. In Africa, acacias are a primary food of giraffes, elephants and other animals.

It kind of blows my mind that my 15-second video of ants in a whistling thorn (Vachellia drepanolobium) at Kicheche Camp Laikipia in Kenya (my 3-part safari blog) has been seen by almost 2,400 people since I posted it in 2016. This leguminous shrub and the ants that live inside the swollen thorns have developed a mutualistic relationship: security guard services in exchange for a home.

The African coral tree (Erythrina caffra) has beautiful scarlet-red blossoms.

Desert legumes like honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) are also good bee plants. Its seeds are eaten by many birds and mammals. This is the cultivar ‘Maverick’.

 

Finally, I’d like to raise a glass to the legumes and their good work with this image, made at Kendall-Jackson Wines in Sonoma, California.  It shows that winemaker’s strategy for improving the fertility of soil in the vineyard with an assortment of legumes, including clovers, vetch and fava beans. A toast with crimson wine to the clovers!  Crimson and  clover, over and over and over.

********

This is the 15th 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 reading 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

Both Sides Now

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I am a cloud lover. Sometimes I just stand there on a summer day staring up at fluffy white clouds that seem to give definition and personality to the massive blue sky.  But clouds aren’t just pretty things: they are combinations of water vapor and the microscopic particles of dust and dirt (cloud condensation nuclei or cloud seeds measuring 100-times smaller than a raindrop) that exist throughout earth’s atmosphere. Depending on their elevation, these aerosols condense as liquid water or ice, i.e. floating cloud droplets. Mixed with air, they become clouds.

The word “cloud” is interesting. It didn’t originate in Greek or Latin, as many of our English words did. It actually came from the ground – specifically, from the word “clod”. According to Eymology Online, it comes from the Old English word “clud”, which meant a ‘mass of rock, hill,’ related to clod.

“The modern sense ‘rain-cloud, mass of evaporated water visible and suspended in the sky’ is a metaphoric extension that begins to appear c. 1300 in southern texts, based on similarity of cumulus clouds and rock masses. The usual Old English word for ‘cloud’ was weolcan. In Middle English, skie also originally meant ‘cloud.’ The last entry for cloud in the original rock mass sense in Middle English Compendium is from c. 1475”.

It’s not easy to imagine, given our modern association of cloud as a meteorological phenomenon, that in the High Middle Ages it was just people looking up at fluffy things in the sky whose shapes reminded them of rocks and hills.

Speaking of rocks and hills, there are clouds that cling to the summits of mountains, like my photo below taken in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand (my blog). They’re called “orographic clouds”. According to Cloud Atlas, “As airflow encounters a mountain or hill, it is forced to rise; this is referred to as orographic lift. If the flow is sufficiently humid, clouds form on the windward side of mountains and are called orographic clouds.”

While hiking under Mount Cook, I was transfixed by the clouds that appeared above it. A child might say that the cloud on the left, below, looks like a whale, but what about the cloud on the right? For me, it was as if a South Pacific mythological deity had ascended into the atmosphere to keep an eye on things below.

Metaphors get updated all the time, of course, and “cloud” has taken on a new meaning in the past few decades. For those of us who hoard digital images and files, we no longer use overflowing metal file cabinets; instead we store them in “the cloud” – essentially a lot of virtual digital warehouses. According to Wikipedia, cloud computing was first referenced in 1994: “The use of the cloud metaphor for virtualized services dates at least to General Magic (an American software and electronics company) in 1994, where it was used to describe the universe of “places” that mobile agents in the Telescript (a programming language) environment could go. As described by Andy Hertzfeld: ‘The beauty of Telescript,’ says Andy, ‘is that now, instead of just having a device to program, we now have the entire Cloud out there, where a single program can go and travel to many different sources of information and create sort of a virtual service.’ The use of the cloud metaphor is credited to General Magic communications employee David Hoffman, based on long-standing use in networking and telecom.”

My cloud photography often seems to go hand-in-hand with oceans and sunsets on holidays in far-away lands, often accompanied by a nice tropical drink. In Bermuda late one November, the western sky as seen from the Pompano Beach Club was a picture-perfect postcard of cumulus clouds above a turquoise Atlantic Ocean. All clouds contain water vapour; they are white because the sun’s light is white. But the more water vapour they contain, the darker they are.

The next day, during an afternoon downpour, it was an angry tumult of dark-grey nimbostratus clouds (“nimbus” is Latin for rainstorm)…..

…. but by evening the skies in the west had begun to clear, leaving the sun to set beneath clouds that had begun to break apart or “diffuse” in cloud lingo.

When I stayed at the Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve one summer evening to photograph (just me and the mosquitoes in 4,700 acres!), I was rewarded with a tapestry of feathery cirrus clouds in a pink sky over Highland Pond, cross-cut in the lower atmosphere with the contrails of airplanes long gone from the scene. Contrail is short for “condensation trail” and it is a line-shaped cloud, usually comprised of ice crystals, formed from an airplane’s engine exhaust at cruising altitude, i.e. 5-6 miles above the earth’s surface. Another phrase is “vapour trail”.

Cumulus…. nimbostratus…. cirrus. And those are just three types of the numerous sub-divisions of high-altitude, medium-altitude and low clouds. How did a “metaphoric extension” for rocks and hills become so… scientific? Turns out that one man took it upon himself to be the namer of clouds. Luke Howard (1772-1864) was a British chemist and amateur meteorologist (aren’t we all?) who, at the age of 30 in a paper he read to a scientific society, expounded on his three categories of clouds, all with Latin names. Cirrus meant ‘hair’ or ‘fibre’, the wispy clouds. Cumulus meant ‘pile’ or ‘heap’, those big pillows of cloud. Stratus meant ‘sheet’ or ‘layer’. He suggested that cloud names could be compounded to define transitions between the cloud categories. Because of his interest in botany, Howard gave the clouds binomial names, as Linnaeus had done with plants. Today we call the study of clouds “nephology”.

Last month, I awoke early on holiday in Florida to photograph the sunrise. When I turned to look further north up the beach, I saw this spectacular rose-pink parade of little clouds being lit by the dawn. In nephology parlance, these cotton balls are cirrocumulus clouds.

As we checked into our hotel in Bali, Indonesia one year, an impending storm brought sunset-pink towers of cumulonimbus rain clouds.

In New Zealand’s Doubtful Sound, part of Fiordland National Park, the banks of clouds and mountains receding behind our ship seemed to be a symphony of blues and greys.

We stayed overnight on the ship in Doubtful Sound (I blogged about this wonderful experience), and the next morning, the steep fiord slopes were partly obscured by low, misty cloud.

At my cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, we often experience fog as the temperature gradient between the lake and air changes, especially in autumn. On this warm September morning, the air meeting the cold lake caused convection fog that obscured the nearby shore but…..

….. created moisture drops that made spider webs highly visible things of beauty. According to Wikipedia, “Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the earth’s surface. Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud, usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influenced by nearby bodies of water, topography and wind conditions.”   But for poet Carl Sandburg, it was “fog” that came in “on little cat feet“…. not low-lying cloud.

If low-lying clouds called fog can create magic, this is one of the magical results.

I honestly don’t know what was going on with this two-layer stratus cloud over Greenland’s diminishing ice sheet that I photographed in Kangerlaussaq, Greenland in 2013. I have tried to understand the “albedo” effect (the lower the albedo, the more solar radiation is absorbed by earth) as it relates to cloud covering the ice, and the difference in winter (ice-phase clouds), spring transition (mixed-phase clouds),and summer (liquid-phase clouds). Let’s just say it’s complicated.

Sometimes it’s enough just to enjoy the clouds without analyzing them too much. This is sunset in Cozumel, Mexico with a fishing boat….

…. and sunset with a dive boat returning to the harbour. In both scenes, I think clouds enhance the image considerably.

On the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, I was impressed with how the setting sun illuminated the western sky beyond the stratus clouds that would make our one-week stay wetter than the entire preceding rainy season. (See my blog here.)

Back in Canada at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, I loved seeing an actual “silver lining” as these cumulonimbus storm clouds drifted west toward the setting sun.

And one night at the lake as I was photographing a full moon, I was happy to see that broken clouds were illuminated, too. For me, this made a more interesting image.

So far, I’ve shown you an assortment of clouds photographed from earth, or “from down” as Joni Mitchell wrote in my featured song in this #mysongscapes blog. But I’ve also made a habit of exploring clouds “from up”. It’s one reason why I enjoy sitting at the airplane window, especially on shorter flights where I don’t feel the need to sleep. In fact, I wrote an entire blog called Six Miles Up: Viewing Earth from Seat 45K; it worked well because there were no clouds all the way across Canada, until we reached the Rocky Mountains. Then we came to those familiar orographic clouds….

…… clinging to the tops of the rugged peaks.

As we approached Vancouver airport, I looked down through the clouds and saw a circle of big freighters anchored in the Strait of Georgia, ….

….. then we were right inside the nimbostratus clouds with raindrops streaking the windows as we descended. I know airplanes have instruments and landing is pretty much done by the numbers (and the air traffic controllers), but I always gulp a little landing in rain clouds like this.

Even on a much shorter journey at lower altitude, like this turbo-prop flight from Montreal to Toronto on Porter Airlines, it was fun to look down through clouds at the quilt-like patches of eastern Ontario farmland in mid-summer. Notice the big shadows cast by the clouds. When I’m photographing at ground level on partly sunny days, I wait for those momentary clouds to appear and shade my scene.

Last month we flew to Florida to visit kind friends who invited us to escape winter for a few days. I loved seeing the turquoise ocean off the east coast and the dark shadow splotches of the clouds on the surface.

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Leaving Denver for Toronto last June, there was rain on the airplane windows and a dark nimbostratus sky but…..

…. after climbing through a little turbulence in the troposphere (ground level to 30,000 feet), the cumulonimbus cloud layer was beneath us and feathery cirrus clouds above. I love that we flew right through that contrail!

By the time we were at cruising speed in the lower levels of the stratosphere (30,000 to 39,000 feet), the sun was setting gloriously behind us in the west.

Flying over the tundra islets of Nunavut towards the capital Iqaluit in 2013, I was intrigued by the peaked clouds that looked like mountaintops in the sky.

As we were flying in South Africa in 2014, I was excited when a break in the clouds let me catch my first glimpse of Cape Town below.

In a small plane flying from the Serengeti to Arusha, Tanzania back in 2007, I peered down through the clouds to see the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai and its prominent cinder cones. That was a truly thrilling moment.

And flying to Santiago from Toronto on an overnight flight in March 2019, I was puzzled by the uniform clouds covering the ocean below us as dawn broke over the Andes to the east. It was only later as we were touring wineries on the coast that I learned that this is the normal sea fog cloud layer caused by the cold, low-salinity Humboldt Current flowing north from the southern tip of Chile to northern Peru. The cool fog is so dependable that the vintners count on it to assist them in the cultivation of their grapevines. The Humboldt Current also produces 18-20% of the world’s marine fish catch.

That brings me to the end of my “up” and “down” photography of clouds, but there is another dimension that I try to capture when I see it. It’s the reflection of clouds on the surface of water. It’s another way of looking “at clouds from both sides now”, and the one situation that perfectly defines Joni Mitchell’s “cloud illusion”.

*********

I have a lot of favourite Joni Mitchell songs (especially the first of #mysongscapes blogs, Night in the City), but her most iconic might be the one she wrote on a plane. As she said of Both Sides Now (1967), “I was reading Saul Bellow’s ‘Henderson the Rain King’ on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He’s on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did”.

If clouds were originally thought of as metaphoric extensions of hills and mountains, in Joni’s Both Sides Now clouds become a metaphoric extension of love and life. Like clouds, love can be viewed from up or down, from the high or the low, from the beginning or the end. Like clouds, love itself is illusory and its vagaries and responsibilities threaten one’s independence. “Don’t give yourself away”. Though published in 1967 (Clouds, the album containing the song, won a Grammy in 1970), the song was probably written in 1966 when she was just 23. By then she had dropped out of art college in Alberta at the age of 20, left home, and begun singing in coffee houses and at hootenannies. At 21, she had a baby whom she gave up for adoption (she would sing about that in the song Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody and ultimately reunite years later with her adult daughter) just months before marrying folksinger Chuck Mitchell and taking his name.  The lyrics of Both Sides Now were prophetic for in Joni’s life there would be two divorces – Mitchell in 1967 and Larry Klein, whom she married in 1982 and divorced in 1994 – and many failed relationships – among others, singers James Taylor and Graham Nash who would both perform at her 75th birthday concert in 2018, entitled Both Sides Now. “I’ve looked at love from both sides now/From give and take, and still somehow/It’s love’s illusions I recall/I really don’t know love at all.”

My favourite version of ‘Both Sides Now’ isn’t by Joni Mitchell or by Judy Collins, who recorded it before Joni herself did. Nor is it by the other 80+ artists who have recorded it, including Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Pete Seeger, Dianne Reeves, Dolly Parton, Paul Anka and Herbie Hancock. As a fan of harmony, the version I love is a 1991 duet between Paul Young and the Irish band Clannad for the movie ‘Switch’.  Have a listen (and try to ignore the lyrics that read “flows” instead of “floes”).

BOTH SIDES, NOW (Joni Mitchell, 1967, Gandalf Publishing Co.)

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all 

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

******

This is the 14th 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 beginning with

  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

 

Raindrops

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Have I told you lately that I love you?  Oh, never mind. That’s a different Van Morrison song. Just thought I’d throw it in here, for all the folks who’ve patiently travelled this  #mysongscapes road with me thus far.  And it’s not a ‘Van the Man’ song today like my last two blogs, but an older guy who’s no longer with us. We’ll get to him later.  In the meantime, can we talk about rain?  As in….

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Let’s talk about rain and photography!  Because depending on how you look at rain, your glass is either half-empty or half-full. And I’m definitely in the latter camp, as you can see by my smiling face as I stride down the High Line under my umbrella. (Thanks to my photographer pal Ginny Weiler for the photo.)

Unless it’s pouring down (and I’ve been in some of those rains carrying three cameras in a big garden far from shelter), an overcast sky and drizzle is far easier to deal with than the bright sunshine of mid-day. Look at the beautiful Magnolia ashei I photographed that May day on the High Line….

….. and the prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) beside the rain-spattered sign….

….. and the pretty heuchera leaf turned over under raindrops to show its lovely purple reverse.

Apart from the gentle light for photography, in a place like the High Line there are far fewer visitors when it’s drizzling.

When I visit Vancouver, I make sure I take an umbrella to photograph plants at my two favourite haunts, the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Van Dusen Botanical Garden. In fact, the wettest I’ve ever been in was at UBC on May 29, 2013 – and the raindrops in the pond below just got more serious as I moved through the garden.

But when I’ve got the day booked for plant photography, I hate to give up because of a little downpour…..

…. especially when the Himalayan poppies, below, are in perfect bloom in the David Lam Asian Garden.  The raindrops just add to the enchantment – and I have never sprayed a blossom with water to make it more “picturesque”, when nature does it for me for free!  (By the way, I wrote a blog on the exquisite David Lam garden in May.)

The redvein enkianthus (E. campanulatus) looked lovely in the drizzle……

….. and across Marine Drive, the Garry Oak Meadow was gorgeous that rainy day. Imagine how terrible this tapestry would have looked in full sun!

In UBC’s herb garden, bees were still foraging on the Angelica archangelica, despite the weather.

The downward-facing flowers of Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum) acted like umbrellas for this bumble bee, though her fur-like hairs were beginning to mat down in the rain.

Though it hails from the hot, dry Drakensberg Range in South Africa, the Moraea robusta in UBC’s wonderful rock garden wore its sunshine yellow with raindrops that day.

A few weeks later in early June, I was back at my “home garden”, the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) on a rainy June morning with no one else around. Though the paving stones were wet on the Westview Terrace where the Indigofera kirolowii was in full flower….

….. and at the entrance to the Floral Hall Courtyard where the Bowman’s root (Porteranthus trifoliatus previously Gillenia) was a cloud of white…..

…..my raindrop close-ups from that day, like the Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’, below, were lovely.

Peonies were just opening that day in June, too…..

…. and the lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) wore its many rain-spattered, folded capes.

Even the eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) sported its raindrops nicely.

Though I’m usually alone at the TBG on a rainy day, I occasionally catch sight of a pretty umbrella held by another intrepid garden visitor.

On June 8, 2015, I visited the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington Ontario with a group of fellow bloggers. We drove there through a massive rainstorm, so when we arrived at the famous Iris Collection….

….. all the bearded irises were delightfully adorned with raindrops. This is ‘Florentine Silk’.

There were so many, I wanted to capture them in one gorgeous photographic memory.

In Manhattan one hot, humid August afternoon, I braved an uptown subway train with no air-conditioning and waited out a thunderstorm and all the people running out of the beautiful Conservatory Garden at Central Park so I could be almost all alone there.

But it didn’t take long for a few people with umbrellas to return to enjoy the spectacular, Lynden Miller-designed borders. I blogged about that August afternoon in the garden.

When I visited Monet’s garden at Giverny in France in April 2008, a spring shower meant the other visitors carried their umbrellas over his famous Japanese bridge on the lily pond…..

…. but all the flowers enjoyed the rain. I blogged about the spring lessons from Giverny as well.

The majority of my rainy photo shoots were in spring, as you might expect “when April showers bring May flowers”.  But May has its share of rainy flowers too. This was on May 5, 2014 at the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific just outside Victoria, B.C.  Bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ looked enchanting to me…..

…. and the trumpets of the little gentians were laden with raindrops.

The skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) was happy to be in its preferred damp state that day.

And of course spring at Vancouver’s wonderful Van Dusen Botanical Garden means there will be lots of west coast rain to make the various Himalayan poppies (Meconopsis)….

….. in the Himalayan Dell just that much lovelier.

While staying with friends in Sun Valley, Idaho in September 2016, we took a walk through a wild meadow just as big rainclouds appeared behind the mountains.

Though we didn’t make it home before getting soaked, I was happy to have had my camera with me to capture the intricacy of the rain drops on the meadow grass seedheads. (And I will refrain from mentioning the irony of rain in Sun Valley….)

More recently, if you read my massive blog about Botanizing Greece with Liberto in November 2019, you might recall the day we stopped at a serpentine outcrop near Smokovo in the pouring rain…..

….. to look for tiny Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, which we did find, but they were as soaked as I was.

We also found our first Sternbergia lutea that morning, but they refused to open in the inclement weather (which is an obvious evolutionary adaptation to keep the reproductive parts dry).

A few redbud (Cercis siliquastrum) flowers still hung on to the trees and they did look pretty in the rain….

….. as did the wild flowers in the meadow (even as my shoes were squishing in the grasses).

In the fall of 2015, I visited Costa Rica with my hiking group. Though we did manage some hiking, that particular one-week period had more rain than the Osa Peninsula had seen in the entire rainy season. I blogged about my time at El Remanso Lodge, but here’s a little video of what real rain is like in a tropical rainforest…..

In my own Ontario gardens, as you might expect, my camera is never far away when the rain stops. At the cottage on Lake Muskoka one June, I found my wild lupines spangled with raindrops…..

…. and the palmate leaves with their small hairs seemed to trap perfect raindrops like mercury quicksilver.

When a big rainstorm hits the cottage on a summer day, it’s often so spectacular in its onset that I grab my camera and set it to video. Have a look (and try to pick up the distant thunder in the first few seconds) ……

At home in Toronto, rainy May days are welcomed because summer is often hot and dry and our urban tree canopy needs all the help it can get. Especially lovely are spring bulbs – this is Tulipa ‘Ballade’, one of my favourites…

….. and this is ‘Angelique’ looking like ballerina tutus hung on a line to dry.

A few years ago, I stood under my umbrella photographing my grandson Oliver doing a little jaunt on the stepping-stone path through the spring bulbs in my front yard while rain poured down and thunder boomed in the distance. Doesn’t he look proud of himself?  I snapped a still photo at the end.

But since this is #mysongscapes, we do need a song to finish up this blog, so let’s take a rainy day tour of my entire Toronto garden, as I found it under my umbrella on June 24, 2018.  And we’ll be serenaded by Dee Clark with his famous Raindrops song from 1961.

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This is the tenth blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading, have a look at the others beginning with

  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

And please do feel free to leave a comment below. I love to read them.