Peg’s Flowers

Posted on by Annie

Somehow, I’ve managed to stop at my friends’ house in Lancaster almost every year. Turns out it’s quite a convenient stopover for both north/south and east/west routes, as well as having good medical people, tire places, and other trappings of civilization. My timing has usually been great for seeing Peg’s diverse and beautiful collection of day lilies, but this year, I was a tad early for that show. I had to “settle” for enjoying her clematis collection.

The purple clematis (above) might have been my favorite, simply because purple is one of my favorite colors. (Update: Peg tells me it’s actually called Sizaja Pitsa, quite the mouthful!). But then I saw this pale iris blooming in the front yard and fell in love with it. There’s something about the shapes of an iris that mesmerize me.

Back to the clematis… I’m really bad at remembering the names of the different types, so I just call them things like “the purplish-pink one” or…

“that beautiful white one with the pink center stripes” and leave it at that. I’m sure Peg is shaking her head right now because every year she names the blooms for me and every year I forget them about five minutes later. I’m not good at names, of flowers, of birds, or even people, for that matter.

I’ll leave you with one last purple flower, which I know is a hyacinth only because I used the Seek app on my iPhone to identify it (Seek is a great app, btw, if you want to ID virtually any plant or flower or tree and have internet where you are). Update: So much for Seek, it got this wrong, it’s an unusual clematis named Diamantina, says Peg, who is always right when it comes to flowers.

Thanks, Peg, for another year of garden glory, and thanks to you and Larry for hosting me once again!

The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.

Oscar Wilde

14 thoughts on “Peg’s Flowers”

  2. Oh, gosh, Kathleen, don’t feel bad! I usually just google key words from my post and “quotations’ and see what comes up. It’s actually really fun to find a new quotation that really matches what I’m writing about in a post. Maybe 5% of the quotations are ones I’ve kept in a file or heard somewhere, 95% of them are as new to me as they are to you!

  3. Beautiful post. I always wonder when people use quotes if they are ones they know. Then I feel unhappy with myself when I don’t know it.

  4. Home for a few days. Mom is getting a little better, getting reports from the Hawaii boys that they had her up and taking a few steps today. I am so relieved. I go back on Saturday.

  5. I’m so glad you could come and stay! First post-quarantine visitor. And thanks for all the rain! Ha!
    Your favorite purple clematis is called “Sizaja Pitsa”. Don’t know why you couldn’t remember that?!? I can’t even pronounce it.
    Hope to see you again next year for some flower or other!

  6. Dang, I knew I’d get at least one wrong but didn’t want to bother you in FL. Will correct my text now

  7. I think you are right! That is yet another clematis called Diamantina. It is a little unusual though so that’s probably why the app couldn’t figure it out.

  8. I think your seek app might have lied. I’ve never seen a hyacinth that looks like that.

  10. Thanks! I sometimes wonder if people think “huh?” when they read them 🙂

  11. Thanks, Fiona, I enjoy finding a quotation that matches what I’m trying to say in the post. And as for not remembering things, I figure I might as well cop to being totally human in that respect. Glad to know I’m not alone in my “what is that called again?” situation!

  12. Hello Annie, like Maria I can attest to your inspirational quote which added such depth to your post. I love and feel good that you too struggle with names of plants and birds yet still love the beauty of nature – thanks for that bit of unintended reassurance!

Comments are closed.