Showing posts with label bloom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloom. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Jewels Of Winter ...

“Snowdrops: Theirs is a fragile but hearty celebration … in the very teeth of winter.”

               ~ Louise Beebe Wilder

            ~American gardening writer & designer

      whose books are now considered classics         of their era

                              ~ 1878 ~ 1938

 

Crocuses and daffodils are beautiful and wonderful to see, but the very first sign of spring being just around the corner are snowdrops – making them the jewels of winter. I captured these snowdrops in this infrared image on a late February afternoon along the Saucon Rail Trail in Lower Saucon Township, Hellertown, Pennsylvania.

 

Snowdrops are hardy perennial, winter-flowering plants that are often heralded as the first sign of spring. They bloom as early as January or February whatever the weather ~ they will even push through frozen, snow-covered ground.

 

Snowdrops are also known as Candlemas Bells, as they were gathered at Candlemas February 2 to decorate churches before the Reformation. They were symbols of purity, which was connected to the rite of purification that Mary observed by going to the temple forty days after Christmas. The festival was formerly known in the Roman Catholic Church as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is now known as the Presentation of the Lord. In the Anglican Church it is called the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. During Candlemas, all of the candles to be used in the church for the coming year are blessed, and the faithful are invited to bring their own candles so that they can be blessed and used in the home for prayer throughout the year.

 

Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, named the snowdrop the Galanthus nivalis, “milk flower of the snow,” in 1753.


 

Saturday, September 16, 2023

In The Cosmos ...

“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.”

       ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

         ~ 1803 ~ 1882

 

The Cosmos Field at St. Luke’s Hospital, Anderson Campus, Easton, Pennsylvania brightens a late August afternoon when the sun often dipped behind the clouds.

 

Cosmos, with their colorful, daisy-like blooms, are related to sunflowers and daisies.

 

The cosmos flowering season lasts for several months, running from early summer until the first frosts arrive in the fall. The season usually lasts from June to October.

 

St. Luke’s also has a Sunflower Garden that is part of the cheery landscape of blooms.


 

Thursday, August 31, 2023

In A Field Of Suns ...

“ Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It’s what the sunflowers do.”

             ~ Helen Keller

              ~ 1880 ~ 1968

Though the sun often dipped behind the clouds on this late August afternoon, the field of sunflowers shone their beauty like little suns in the Sunflower Garden of St. Luke’s Hospital, Anderson Campus, Easton, Pennsylvania.

 

A bee decided to buzz in and photobomb this shot, landing on the sunflower in the foreground.

 

Young sunflowers move to face the sun, a movement called heliotropism. Mature sunflowers generally stop moving and remain facing East, which lets them be warmed by the rising sun.

 

The sunflower (or “soniashnyk”) is Ukraine’s national flower and has been grown on its central and eastern steppes since the middle of the 18th century. And today, in light of Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, the sunflower is a symbol of “I Stand With Ukraine!”

 

St. Luke’s also has a Cosmos Field filled with their colorful, daisy-like blooms, as cosmos are related to sunflowers and daisies.