My Bloom Day tulips from Wednesday have faded into orchid-like shapes this morning.
And shall we not part at the end of day,
With a sigh, a smile?— Ernest Dowson, from “April Love“
Category: European gardens
Bloom Day in April: tulips
A previous occupant of our house left us three or four clumps of orange-red and dark pink tulips. I’m enjoying the colors in our kitchen window and in the living room.
To see what’s blooming today for other garden bloggers, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.
The aforementioned woods
A little while ago today. . .
The forest behind our house carpeted in wood anemones or Anemone nemorosa, a small white flower native to Germany.
I just noticed that little black bug on the flower petal. It looks like a tick. I feel itchy now. . . .
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king…
On the windowsill, this morning
I looked out the upstairs window yesterday afternoon and saw that the woods behind our house were carpeted in wood anemones or Anemone nemorosa, a native flower.
When I went out the back gate, I also found yellow primroses — Primula vulgaris, I believe — along the fence.
Except for the little white flowers and some ivy, the forest is still mostly brown and beige, but that will change very quickly now that daytime temperatures are in the 60s° F.
Flowers in a vase
or strewn in mad profusion
across a meadow. Choose— Tom Disch, from “Memoirs of a Primrose“
Castle garden in Meersburg
Castle garden, Meersburg, March 29, 2015.
I’m sorry that I had no porch for you on Sunday; we spent a long weekend in the town of Meersburg on Lake Constance, about an hour and a half south of Stuttgart.
Aside from its lakefront location (and a beautiful view of the Swiss Alps across the water), the town’s principal feature is the medieval Alte (old) Burg — Germany’s oldest inhabited castle.*
Its sweet little garden, tucked along a high wall, seems to reflect the presence of the castle’s most distinguished resident, the romantic poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. She frequently stayed there in the 1840s, when her brother-in-law owned it.
Her pretty rooms with their floral wallpapers have been carefully preserved — she died there in 1848.
You can see the position of the garden along the castle walls in this Wikipedia photo.
*Sections date as early as the 7th century.
enclos*ure 