#Forsythia Bush

[dwuerch-blog]

The Faithful Forsythias

Our recent journey across Canadian provinces and America’s upper states seems to have awakened my senses to appreciate God’s handiwork in places, nature, people and things more than ever before. And, that appreciation has given me food for thought and a new, keen awareness of His creation for my next blog. On excursions, traveling via bus along coastlines and towns, I couldn’t help but be…

[philgennuso]

Forsythia Bush (#Nature #Haiku #GraphicArts)

Forsythia Bush by Phil Gennuso Arts bright forsythia bushcelebrant of springherald of new beginnings ******************************** Yesterday I finally saw some Forsythia bushes blooming alongside some of the roads! Well, that does it! Daffodils, Crocus, and now the bright Forsythia bush, Spring is officially here to stay! For me, the crown jewel is the sweet Magnolia Blossom, but that is a…

[topoet]

Forsythias Spring Forth

Forsythia is one of the sure of signs of spring in Toronto. The yellow flowers are always a joy to behold. It is one of those bushes that bloom first then leaves appear. It is also a perennial that can survive winter weather.  These are a few of the many in my east-end neighbourhood. Mine was planted the first summer we lived in our house. in front of my house Hey! You can give me $$$ to…

[jesusonafrickinboat]

Then see what the flower looks like

[lacymoonchild]

[shadsiesartattic]

My Neighbor’s Forsythia  [IMAGE ID: Acrylic and Micron pen on watercolor paper.  The better part of a forsythia bush in bloom before a roadway.  It is a riot of little yellow flowers. / END IMAGE ID].  There are a few highlights on the original done in neon paint.  It scanned white, so I did a little bit of digital color-correction, too lazy to do so in detail, which is why there are some fuzzy areas.  I decided that those looked like sunlight was hitting the flowers, which is what my bright highlights were meant to convey, anyway.  I was too lazy to drag out the digital camera to get a better shot of this, which is the only way to get fluorescents / neons.  (The cameras are being readied for a trip, I don’t want to try to unpack them).   

[curiosityschild]

💛 Forsythia and Daffodils my beloveds 💛

[loneberry]

notes from my sickbed

(From The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov)

*

Books I’ve finished reading during my COVID convalescence. I read Shatz’s Fanon biography, The Rebel’s Clinic, with a race + psychoanalysis reading group I’ve been hosting for a few years now. I have mixed feelings about the book, but that topic is for another day.

Re: Minor Detail—listen to this wide-ranging interview with Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli. Toward the end there is a thought-provoking conversation about the question of the state. Loved the discussion of the hospitality of language. The bells tolling in the background. The agency of words, the being of silence. 

*

The only thing I like more than reading in bed is reading outside. I’ve just been sitting on my back porch from around 7:30am until an hour before sunset, reading and writing notes, pausing whenever there is a soft breeze to look at the quivering leaves of the maple, or to observe the adorable sparrows that have built a nest in the roof of my porch. (They fly off toward the tree when they sense I am looking at them.) I’ve been feeling quite weak, but I force myself to walk a little around sunset despite the shortness of breath. In the evening I watch films and fall asleep listening to podcasts. 

A couple days ago I walked past the old apartment I used to live in during the pandemic. Is it wrong to say—I felt a kind of relief when everything shut down, that my frenetic schedule of events + travel was instantly erased. I quite enjoy spending time alone, marinating in my thoughts, reading and writing all day, living in a semi-hallucinatory state induced by how intensely I live in these parallel worlds made up of words. (So some part of me finds pleasure in convalescing too.)

On Hancock Street, the bursting rose bushes have been uprooted to make room for the sleek new (hideous) house on the corner. The Mountain laurel and wild roses were blooming at the apartment I lived in during the pandemic. I thought about how well I got to know the tiny radius around that apartment, the almost-religious attention I paid to every inch of new plant growth, how I mapped my emotional state onto whatever was blooming in that moment—forsythia during the initial lockdown, the scent of lilac wafting in through the window as I completed my last weeks of grad school, the roses and mountain laurel blooms during the news of M’s suicide.

I walked on the trail I walked on during the pandemic, by the grape vines covering the fence of the community gardens, the same vines I observed four years ago while talking to M’s publisher on the phone, listening to his voice crack with emotion as he spoke about wishing there was something he could have done, while another part of my brain recoiled at the sight of the pockmarked leaves—a disease was spreading across the vines, possibly triggering my (moderate) trypophobia. He was saying something about a camera he had given her... 

I remember looking at the last orange light catching the tops of the maple trees and thinking, “You’ll never see that light.”

My oura ring metrics are still in the dumps (it’s funny this little smart ring knew I was sick before I did) but I think I am slowly getting over this bout of COVID. The fatigue and brain fog is crushing, but at least I can still smell the irises. 

[e-louise-bates]

LMM fans, what do we think Jane would have named the house at Lakeside Gardens once it was theirs?

Some description of it:

"It was a small house for Lakeside Gardens but a good deal bigger than Lantern Hill. It was built of gray stone and had casement windows ... some of them beautifully unexpected ... and a roof of shingles stained a very dark brown. It was built right on the edge of the ravine overlooking the tree tops, with five great pines just behind it."

"Jane went all around it and peered through every diamond-paned window. There was a living room that would really live once it was furnished, a dining room with a door that opened into a sun room, and the most delightful breakfast nook in pale yellow, with built-in china closets."

"At the back the ground was terraced right down to the floor of the ravine. There was a rock garden and a group of forsythia bushes that must have been fountains of pale gold in early spring. Three flights of stone steps went down the terraces, with the delicacy of birch shadows about them, and off to one side was a wild garden of slender young Lombardies."

...Then there's lots of description about the view and the lake and all that, but I'm not typing all that up.

I am rubbish at house/place names--my imagination is of a different sort, and even when as a kid I attempted to name places the way Anne did they were more along the lines of the kind of names Diana and Jane Andrews came up rather than Anne's, so I've got nothing, but my curiosity is piqued. What do you suppose LMM would have had Jane (& parents) name the house?

[dailyzineprompt]

Daily Zine Prompt:

September 23

Draw some of the plants that naturally grow where you live, or where you used to live. Some examples for me are snowdrops, forsythia, mint, mulberries, and that one bush that had really soft leaves that I don't know what it was called.

[sgiandubh]

The trouble Jones photo has been looked at extensively at the time.... there are photos of the restaurant on Google. There is lots of shrubery and foliage as decor there. It is a bush behind him 🤷

He is a part of that circle of friends so it:s not surprising he was there ...

Dear Foliage Anon (and the other one, too),

It's a double b, for shrubbery. And, still that capital letters problem? Truc possible?

In English, shrubbery means this and it is one of the main classical features of a jardin à l'anglaise:

It heavily insists on shrubs, to give that studied négligé aspect to a landscape. This is a shrub, foliage on top:

Quite a different affair from that picture, huh?

Again: I do not remember this being discussed and if anything, that should be evidence enough that I was not there at the time. And so did a LOT of people who read this page.

Party poopers, aren't you?

PS: my grandma was a wonderful gardener. We had an exuberant Forsythia shrubbery just along the terrace of the house I spent all my childhood in. So, there's that. I think I can tell a bush from turf, as I can tell a crude photoshop from reality.

[bonefarm]

I have been trying to find a plant that can go in my West Facing South Oklahoma front garden basically since I moved here. It’s murdered everything. Zone 7a, windy, stormy, hot, cold. We have it all. This fall I’m doing a bush/tree gauntlet. In the running is a Sand Cherry, a chaste tree, three varieties of Abelia, hydrangea, forsythia and a couple of dwarf butterfly bushes.

May the odds be ever in their favor.

[dansnaturepictures]

12 of my favourite photos to take in December 2023 and month summary

The photos are of; Goldcrest at Lakeside Country Park, Blue Tit at Lakeside, Long-tailed Duck at Hayling Island Oysterbeds, mushrooms in Abbey Gardens, Roe Deer at Lakeside, turkey tail mushrooms at Fishlake Meadows, Silver-sided Sector spider at home, winter heliotrope at Lakeside, view at Winnall Moors, view at Southsea, view at Hayling Island and the stark looking rose bush in the garden with a few fading rose hips and yellow leaves.

December was a charming month packed full of wild wonder for me, a month where I had to do things a bit differently led to a huge focus on local areas and a couple of relatively fresh places for me visited and I saw some amazing wildlife to have a fitting end to an incredible year for me. In my birdwatching a final addition to my highest ever year list to bring my 2023 total a neat 220 came in the form of a bird I have a huge bond with and admiration for, the Black Redstart at Southsea Castle. This came a day after being mesmerised by wonderful views of the Long-tailed Duck and other birds at Hayling Island. Red Kite, Marsh Harrier, Stonechat, Rock Pipit, Nuthatch, Kingfisher, Jay, Mute Swan, Brent Geese, Red-breasted Merganser and Great White Egret were other key birds of my month. On my Lakeside walks the Goosanders continued to give with more fantastic sightings of them and the Common Gull was another welcome frequently seen winter visitor. Cormorant, fine views of Tufted Ducks, the cheery constant of Great Crested Grebes, Goldcrest, Green and Great Spotted Woodpecker, Jay, marvelous Redwings, Song Thrush, Wren, so many smashing moments seeing Long-tailed Tits, Kingfisher and Ring-necked Parakeet have been other key Lakeside sightings to bring me joy this month.

It has naturally quietened down for insects this month but I did manage a butterfly sightings with a probable Peacock seen quickly flying over at Lakeside and a hoverfly there on Christmas Eve. Grey Silverfish as well as frequent sightings of Long-bodied Cellar spider and the Silver-sided Sector spiders were interesting to see at home. It has been a memorable mammal month ending perhaps my greatest year of watching mammals with magical moments connecting with Roe Deers at Lakeside and Winnall Moors and a fair few Grey Squirrels and Brown Rats seen. Likewise with fungi a quieter month but multiple turkey tail sightings and some splendid candlesnuff fungi among others kept the interest up.

In a wet and relatively mild month a notable thing was how almost bizarre it was to notice things with plants a few weeks/months ahead of where they should be, from the verge at Lakeside bursting with winter heliotrope in flower and a violet to the hazel catkins beginning to adorn the landscape and the forsythia hedge out the front having a few flowers. Wild carrot and white deadnettle were two of a few of the summer/all season flowers I enjoyed in flower in places too. It was a great month of observing seed heads from fleabane to hogweed including gripping old man's beard and in an incredible fruit year bits of fruit still going like rose hips, hawthorn berries and holly berries. Mistletoe a key seasonal sight. Finally I enjoyed many breathtaking moments immersing myself in the outdoors at special sites taking in beautiful landscapes, with great sky scenes including the rainbow and the moon key to this month too. Happy New Year all!

[the-zebra-dragon]

Cat Acclimation update day 1:

Crew Status:

Nyx: Free to move about the cabin.

Persephone: In the brig.

Yap: In the airlock.

Several months ago, we found a dumped cat on the grounds (front yard, specifically under the forsythia bush). We have since taken her in, providing meals and water and shelter, under the impression she would be staying outside and providing pest control (my mother does not know nor want to learn the downsides of outside cats. Believe me, I’ve tried. We’re lucky enough to have the two inside ones remain inside.)

In a twist of events, it turns out Yap is declawed.

While this raises serious questions about who dumped her (such as who are they, where do they live, and how fortified is their dwelling?) and other questions (how much is an aluminum baseball bat, again?), my parents have had a change of heart and decided Yap Must Become an Inside Cat. As much as my parents had to pivot hard, I saw this coming like a big red truck. Mom’s kind of a sucker for a little affectionate kitty.

Unfortunately, the two resident cats are… not exactly cat friendly. My black cat Nyx just about tolerates Persephone (the tortoiseshell), and Persephone pitches a tantrum whenever a neighbor’s cat shows up on the back deck. On one such occasion she actually became so frustrated she beat up Nyx, leading my mother to believe that Persephone is an aggressive little shit not going to accept Yap without a fight, which Yap has no defense against.

So. The plan, like I’ve been saying the whole time, is to introduce the animals incrementally. The house has an airlock door that’s mostly glass, so we put Yap in there. Persephone was placed in the sunroom for the duration (just in case) and Nyx was allowed to investigate Yap through the glass.

Nyx took one look at Yap, hissed, and ran all the way across the house. But she did circle back a minute later to look some more, with significantly less hissing. I heard no growling, aside from Persephone being very vocal about being tossed in Naughty Kitten Jail. Yap had no abnormal reactions to Nyx, and was eventually released back into the garage.

So basically this went about as well as expected. Both cats are having a big sniff of the airlock now, and perhaps tomorrow we’ll see what Percy thinks.

⬇️Nyx, wondering why she’s suddenly got a sense of Deja Vu. ⬇️

[briarpatch-kids]

Jojo found a safer spot to nest instead of under the rosebush. This one is under the Forsythia bush!

[topoet]

My Garden January 1, 2024

New Year’s Eve brought Toronto its first snow that lasted more than an hour! We had a ‘green’ & overcast Christmas that was sort of depressing to look at. The white on New Year’s morning was a welcome sight. The snow didn’t last too long, it was gone by afternoon. boxwood & maple in front yard snapdragons in front garden forsythia in front garden dusty miller in back garden red berry bush in…