In celebration of the New Year, I'd like to ask you to do something completely out of character - to forget you think plants should be cared for, protected, admired, studied or anything else like that. Imagine you've never seen plants and trees before. I mean you might have seen them unintentionally as you do the shopping or knock on doors or walk down lanes in the ordinary course of life - but pretend you've not actually seeeeeen them in the sense of having taken proper notice. Maybe it isn't too hard to imagine after all. 
I don't think many people see ivy round here; not each, glossy, heart-shaped leaf. Great, thick vines of the stuff envelope trees and trail across the ground. There's no shortage. 
Brambles are the same; acre upon acre of dark, impenetrable, unsightly prickliness. No ordinary person would go examining individual leaves. There isn't the time. If you worked in a bank, you wouldn't take a microscope to the pennies. Someone sprayed silver paint on the trunk of my neighbour's ornamental cherry last summer. If only I'd taken a photo! It looked very pretty. The tree itself is a disgrace to plant-dom. It produces great big, pink, vivid, un-sightly hunks of blossom every spring. They look like squashed up blobs of loo paper. The silver paint though - it high-lighted the texture of the bark and the sun sparkled against it as if this was how everything was meant to be.
Squirt paint on a plant, tip colour on its leaves . . . and lo and behold . . . it looks different. Each shape calls for attention. Out of all the leaves in the wood, these stand out proud. The colours on the leaves in this post are the result, I guess, of random acts. I don't know why they are there and I don't suppose much thought went into choosing where the paint should go. Isn't chance lovely? 
Polka dots on trunks are different though. There's effort behind them. They are up the trunks and along the branches of a whole, small grove of Holm Oaks. Don't sniff or complain - admire the industry . . . think how proud you would have been if it had been you who had done it . . . (bet you wouldn't even have thought of it!) - so SMILE! Smile for New Year! (And if you don't smile - the penalty is to count all the millions and millions and millions and millions . . . of leaves which don't have paint on.) Lucy P.S. The trees and the blue ivy were first seen on Pictures Just Pictures. Hope you don't mind seeing them again
I don't think many people see ivy round here; not each, glossy, heart-shaped leaf. Great, thick vines of the stuff envelope trees and trail across the ground. There's no shortage. 
Brambles are the same; acre upon acre of dark, impenetrable, unsightly prickliness. No ordinary person would go examining individual leaves. There isn't the time. If you worked in a bank, you wouldn't take a microscope to the pennies. Someone sprayed silver paint on the trunk of my neighbour's ornamental cherry last summer. If only I'd taken a photo! It looked very pretty. The tree itself is a disgrace to plant-dom. It produces great big, pink, vivid, un-sightly hunks of blossom every spring. They look like squashed up blobs of loo paper. The silver paint though - it high-lighted the texture of the bark and the sun sparkled against it as if this was how everything was meant to be.
Squirt paint on a plant, tip colour on its leaves . . . and lo and behold . . . it looks different. Each shape calls for attention. Out of all the leaves in the wood, these stand out proud. The colours on the leaves in this post are the result, I guess, of random acts. I don't know why they are there and I don't suppose much thought went into choosing where the paint should go. Isn't chance lovely? 
Polka dots on trunks are different though. There's effort behind them. They are up the trunks and along the branches of a whole, small grove of Holm Oaks. Don't sniff or complain - admire the industry . . . think how proud you would have been if it had been you who had done it . . . (bet you wouldn't even have thought of it!) - so SMILE! Smile for New Year! (And if you don't smile - the penalty is to count all the millions and millions and millions and millions . . . of leaves which don't have paint on.) Lucy P.S. The trees and the blue ivy were first seen on Pictures Just Pictures. Hope you don't mind seeing them again
9 comments:
You too Lucy and please keep posting these wonderful pictures!
When we pull out of our neighborhood there is a white board fence directly across the major street on which we turn to go anywhere. It is a style typical of the fencing on the horse farms of the Bluegrass area of Kentucky. It is wooden boards attached to the posts in the horizontal position, and then painted white. There is a gap between them of several inches. In the yard on the other side of the fence of horizontal wooden boards grows a white rose that leans upon the fence. I enjoy seeing it every summer. In December I was driving out and something caught my eye over there: I thought, Is that rose Blooming! I looked carefully then realized they had painted the fence and some of the white paint landed on the leaves of the rambler rose. I did notice those!
Very interesting! Happy New Year.
Happy New Year! What an interesting idea. I might have to try that when the Mayapple foliage enters its unsightly phase next August. Who knows, it might start a new fad.
Lucy,
Enjoyed my first visit to your blog. Wonderful. And thank you for stopping by mine with your whimsical wishes for a Happy New Year. Your timing couldn't have been more perfect for so many reasons. Sending you wishes for a magic and laughter filled 2010!
Chris
Delightful splashes of colour!
Hello Galloping Gardener.
It's trying to resist posting photos that's the problem! I think I would happily spend all my time preparing posts but . . . well . . . the rest of life calls too!
Lucy
Hello Barbee.
You give us a very clear picture there - it's like reading a scene from a story.
It's odd how we can be surrounded by wonderful and interesting things like leaves but rarely stop to examine them in their precise individuality. Sometimes it takes an accidental blodge of paint to make us notice.
Lucy
It surely does put the plants and trees in a different perspective when they are highlited like that! My Dad spraypaints, on purpose, his alliums after they bloom. They looks like fireworks all summer long now. So strange!
Rosey
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