Life in gardens: after lunch

Västra Götaland, Lysekil, Lysekil, Bohuslän, Övrigt-Sällskapsliv“Three women, Lysekil, Sweden,” 1880s, a cyanotype by Carl Curmanvia Swedish National Heritage Board Commons on flickr.

The woman at the top of the picture is Calla Curman, wife of the photographer.

For more images like this one, check out one of my favorite blogs, It’s About Time, which is currently posting a series, “Summer Women” — beautiful mostly 19th century paintings of women and children in the garden.

Vintage landscape: iris garden

Iris garden, Japan, University of Victoria LibrariesIris garden beside water in Japan, probably Yokohama, ca. 1910, via University of Victoria Libraries Commons on flickr.

The hand-colored glass plate slide is from a collection of “Yokohama photographs,” sold to foreign tourists between about 1868 and 1912.

Vintage landscape: wisteria

Wisteria Japan

Women in the garden in Japan, late 19th to early 20th century, via Photographs of Japan Collection, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, The New York Public Library.

Vintage landscape: spring rain

Showers, White House, early 1920s, via Library of Congress“Sidewalk in front of White House, Washington, D.C.,” early 1920s, by Harris & Ewing, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour. . .

— Geoffrey Chaucer, from “The General Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales

Translation: April showers bring May flowers.

Today is Whan that Aprille Day — a day to enjoy “alle langages that are yclept ‘old,’ or ‘middel,’ or ‘auncient,’ or ‘archaic,’ or, alas, even ‘dead.’” This is the idea of @LeVostreGC (or Chaucer Doth Tweet), who blogs at Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.