Friday, March 25, 2011

Picturing our Dream Gardens


How many of you actually know what this is?


Maybe now?


Not really a clue, huh?

I'm a big fan of digital cameras as garden tool. I have a fairly low-end 4 mega-pixel Kodak. I have taken nearly 4,000 pictures with it, mostly plant and garden related although there are some of my son playing basketball.

Plant pictures are easier to take. My son and that basketball move around way too much, even if he does play "post".

Every gardener with a digital camera can tell you something they did that improved their garden or containers because of a picture they took. It sure beats taking notes on a piece of paper at botanical gardens, too.

I have to say, though, to capture the unusual and wonderful, my digital camera can not be beat. I think this is probably one of those garden Kodak moments. The "moment" lasted 4 to 5 weeks in this case, but pictures are all I have.

So those of you looking at the attached pictures, how many guessed astilbe?

Yup, This is an astilbe. It broke dormancy a couple years ago, "in the pink of health", we could say. It was about 1/3 the height, 1/3 the leaf size. A pretty bright pink-- this has not been photo-shopped. It stayed this color about 5 weeks, at which time I got the courage up to attempt to divide it. After I divided it, it began to become much whiter only to then become tinged with green. It eventually went almost entirely green except with a bit of pink/red tinge on the edges of the leaves. It bloomed pink with a normal size and shaped flower, unremarkable even. It was bushier and the leaf edges much more jagged and almost pleated.

An incredible shade of pink with spring bulbs past and everything else unfurling their bit of new spring green, it seemed a moment caught in time in contrast.

It would have been wonderful if had repeated the next spring, but no...

It was a Kodak moment...

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