You had to have strength if you wanted to see flowers other than the pink and white scene-stealing peonies last week at the Pike Place Market. However, with fortitude, exuberant if diminutive orange poppies could be spotted holding their own in amongst all the pink in the flower stalls.
Enjoy these pictures of the orange and yellow spitfires, which are known as “California Poppies”.
Last Saturday I was swept away by the profusion of peonies on display at Pike Place Market!
These pink ones with the broken darker pink color are really extraordinary! I am very taken with the broken patterns in flowers (see my earlier posts on broken colors in tulips and koi fish).
These tight, white buds promise a glorious floral moment coming soon.
Every variety of pink was to be found in these over-the-top flowers.
Pink moving to mauve, to lavender.
Gorgeous, blowsy peonies! I love them! I saw my first peony when I was in high school, visiting a relative in Montana. In his overgrown and neglected garden were these large bushy plants with shiny green foliage. And there were the blossoms of all shades of pink. And a crazy big fragrance, not always wonderful; in fact, the scent sometimes resembled ammonia! But the big bold blossoms were simply irresistible to me on that warm spring morning 40 years ago. And I have loved them ever since. They were the first perennial I planted in my Denver garden 18 years ago.
Enjoy the shots of this favorite spring-time bloom, for, like life, it has a definite peak season. They can sometimes be forced to bloom under certain man-made conditions, but forced blooms are never as wonderful as the real thing.
This is the scene from Pike Place Market yesterday. Calla lilies in abundance.
You had to focus to see them, because, as I will be posting soon, the peonies literally stole the show. But today I am focusing.
And here is my beautiful proof. I was focused on the white callas.
And, just for fun, here is a behind-the-scenes shot from a flower stall at the Market. This is a fast-paced business of an ephemeral product.
On this beautiful sunny summer morning in Seattle, I paid a quick visit to the Market for some breakfast and some inspiration.
Breakfast was an iced latte and a chocolate croissant, topped off by a local fresh peach that literally weighed 2 pounds. You think I am kidding, but I’m not. The peach was the size of a softball. More about the local peaches in another post.
Today it was the sweet peas that captured my attention. I have tried unsuccessfully to grow these simple flowers for years. I always planted them from seed in my Denver garden and after many unsuccessful attempts over several growing seasons (read=years), I accepted that sweet peas don’t like high, dry climates. Fine. I can deal with that.
So this past winter I was walking through a local nursery, dreaming about growing season and I saw packages of sweet pea pods. I bought some and have been watching them grow in containers in my outdoor garden here.
As of today, I have about 6 feet of vines on the two sweet pea plants that sprouted and grew for me. I have yet to see a blossom on one of these two plants. I will say I like the rambling green viney stems with their tendrils quite a lot, but really, one blossom would not hurt!
But then I walked into the market and was bombarded by sweet pea scent. I knew I had found treasure. I snooped through all of the flower stalls and found lots and lots of sweet peas in buckets, in bouquets, and in bunches. I took lots of pictures and bought some to bring home.
Here are these little lovelies in my living room, a shot taken just a few minutes ago. I have found Love as seen in pink, coral, lavender, white and purple!
Happy Weekend!
Until you have tasted the berries grown in this locale, you haven’t really ever tasted a true strawberry. No supermarket strawberry has ever come close to this delicacy. Fly on over; it’s definitely worth it. I guarantee you’re gonna like the way it tastes. (Yuk yuk, George Zimmer in the news this week.)
Here’s a wonderful painting of strawberries, accompanied by cakes and cream–not to mention porcelain, silver, glass, clear water and many types of linen–by the artist John F. Francis (1808-86). Francis is a favorite still-life painter of mine. He had great mastery of painting the still-life and would have painted this lovely image of the spring-time delight around 1850. I love its slightly archaic quality. He was showing off his skill in capturing all of these different textures.
Think back to a time of no refrigeration and you get a sense of how sweet this annual celebration would have been. A fugitive pleasure, the taste of fresh strawberries.
And, on a totally different track: did you realize that it stays light in Seattle until at least 9:30 p.m. in the summer? Because I didn’t! But it does.
We have had lots of warm and sunny weather here, including today. But yesterday it seriously rained. I have always thought there is just no place more beautiful in summer than Seattle. I still think that.
I love that I can leave my home in Madison Park and follow Madison Street all the way from Lake Washington to Elliot Bay in Puget Sound. Water view to water view. Very picturesque.
Have you ever seen a magnolia blossom in the snow? Here is one from last month in Denver!
Plum blossoms can continue their show, snow or no.
It takes a hardy tree to bloom in a Denver garden. It can snow and then be sunny and hot the next day. It also takes a hardy gardener to work with it.
This is a Spanish broom, blooming two weeks ago in my Denver gardens.
Just got back from a two-week visit to Denver that turned into four weeks. When I arrived in Denver in early May, there were no leaves on the trees and nothing was blooming, because Denver received a big snowfall in early May.
Korean spice viburnum blooming in my Denver garden. Very fragrant!
When I left Denver yesterday, summer weather had arrived, all the trees had leaves, but the lilacs never really bloomed and we went right into roses in bloom. It was strange indeed.
The Japanese maple has finally grown new leaves after having been frozen off by early May snow.
I was very very happy to get back to Seattle and back to my new little home here. I am happy to know I really did make the right decision a year ago to make the move here.
But I can tell by looking at Seattle that the area has had no rain. The green that you associate with Seattle is missing. The slopes by the side of the highway are brown with dryness. I hope we get some rain soon!
This particular wisteria is blooming at the Seattle Japanese Garden as we speak (as I write). This incredible vine was planted in the early 1960s when the garden was first constructed and it was already 35 years old when it was planted. You still with me? That means that this vine is roughly 75 years old! So, yes it is true, some things just get better with age. Fine wine. Wisteria vines. Certain bloggers.
Isn’t it absolutely dreamy?
It even grabs attention even from far away.
This wisteria was blooming in another incredible spot on earth, in Alberobello in Puglia, Italy. I was there in March about four years ago which was springtime in southern Italy. Again, a gorgeous vine! If you are a lucky person, you will recognize that you are in Alberobello by the conical shape of the roofs in the background. They are unique to this spot.
How beautiful is this? Pretty darn beautiful.
And now we are in a different place. You know it immediately by the palm trees.
The picture above and the next few are of a wisteria just starting to bloom in Sorrento on the Amalfi coast. This is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I just couldn’t believe how gorgeous it was. It is almost incomprehensible.
Another picture.
And another.
See the Bay of Naples in the background. I mean, come on…what is more beautiful than this!
The word for wisteria in italiano is glicine.
One day soon I will talk about another of my favorite plants, known in Italian as ortensia. You will have to check back soon to find out what this one is.
Ciao, tutti!
About a month ago, I had the great pleasure of visiting Skagit county, about an hour north of Seattle, to see the fields of blooming bulbs. There were pastures of daffodils, as above and below.
There were fields of tulips.
Rows of tulips.
Rows and rows and rows of tulips.
You can walk up to and in to some of the fields. But the better place to see the bulbs up close is in the display beds that some of the bulb producers have prepared for visitors. I enjoy looking at the names given to various species throughout the horticultural world. In the photo above you see the variety named “Seattle”. Did the namer think Seattle needed sunshine? Is there a better reason to name this tulip “Seattle”?
This variety is named “Laurel”. For obvious reasons, I always have an affinity for anything named with the Latin root of “laur”.
So, feast your eyes on all the tulips and other bulbs. It is great fun to visit Skagit county in April!
Today was one of the most beautiful days on earth. These photos are all of the the Japanese Garden, with an emphasis on the azaleas.
Check out this living wall of blooming azaleas. Check out the reflection of the same flowers in the water.
Another angle.
And the wall again. Did you ever see a more beautiful walkway?
The garden is at its peak right now. There are flowering shrubs everywhere you look.
See what I mean?
The koi are coming out of hibernation (seriously, did you know they hang at the bottom of the water all winter and don’t eat?), and people love to watch them from the zig-zag bridge as above.
The azaleas look even more lovely from below the wisteria arbor.
The water lilies are waking up too. They aren’t blooming yet, but they are growing up from the bottom of the pool.
It seems like most of the azaleas are pink, but some are yellow. You know what, I don’t love azaleas. I like them. But they are so lush and so vibrant here that I find them too gaudy.
Here are some in pumpkin orange.
Happy weekend!
get back, lauretta! 
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