Aquiligias

So, it's that special time of year again when Granny's Bonnet flowers all across the northern hemisphere but particularly, as far as I'm concerned, in my own back garden.

You may recall from my introductory pages, I chose to call myself Granny Bonnet and to wear an aquilegia flower for my year-round headgear for a bit of fun and laughter and to signify 'using my noddle' as my old Dad would say!

The genus ranunculaceae aquiligias are related to buttercups. Also called columbine, there are at least sixty species and probably hundreds of variations in size, shape and colour. In my garden they tend to be quite subtle shades of pale pink, purple-blue and wine and of two distinct 'bonnet' types, one flamboyant and the other close-petalled and modest rather like an old-fashioned poke bonnet without the fancy trimmings!

The root of the name columbine, columba is Latin, meaning dove, and some believe that the flower symbolises five doves in a circle. But the true Latin name is Aquilegia which means eagle, so named because the pointed spurs of the flower resemble the talons of an eagle.

The ancient Greeks and Romans attributed this plant to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. For prim Victorians it meant 'resolved to win.' Celts though believed the flower to be a portal into the world of dreams and visions, 'headology' of a very different kind and maybe connected to its use as a medicinal herb?

Whatever its past associations, Granny loves to see the bonnets self-seed and popping up all over the place for a couple of months in early Spring, when their nectar-rich petals make for a very happy Granny and lot of happy bees!

So there you are. I shall continue to wear Aphrodite's flower on my head and hope 75 years of various experiences have endowed me with its associated biblical wisdoms of intellect, namely reverence, strength, advice, knowledge and fear. I prefer though to lump them under my own heading (pardon the pun). 'Headology' for me has a much more subtle emotional and creative feel - maybe those canny Celts were closer to the mark eh?

P.S. I have to confess, to some the flower resembles a fool's cap, so am I mad to wear one...?

Poinsettias

Do you till have your Christmas Poinsettia - Euphorbia pulcherrima? Millions of them are bought at the festive time of the year and and for a few brief days, brighten our homes with splashes of vivid scarlet before limping off to 'death by dustbin', along with old wrapping paper, cards and dried-out Christmas trees. Not surprisingly their survival rate is low, as they originate in Mexico and keel over and die if exposed to temperatures lower than 13 degrees for even as little as fifteen minutes! This means that those appealing plants ranged in the lobby of the newsagent, petrol station or supermarket are probably half-way to horticultural heaven even before they reach the chilly boot of the car... ​ Initially grown for cutting, poinsettias (whose 'petals' are actually coloured leaf-bracts), were commercialised first in the USA. Nowadays grown as potted plants in heated European greenhouses with all the associated tender loving care of vast commercial operations, plus chemicals to keep them healthy and unnaturally small, they are a far cry from the tall and leggy plants growing semi-wild that I remember seeing in the Canary Islands. Personally, I can't help but feel such a lot of time, attention and energy could perhaps be better used cultivating something more beneficial. However, there's no denying that their bright good looks make them an attractive and cheap gift at a time of year when a splash of red (and now also cream, pink and ‘splotched’) is most needed. ​

It is possible to over-winter poinsettias and I did once try but wished I hadn’t bothered as the resulting knobbly, bare branches looked nothing like the plant I had originally bought. So, from now on if I can't find British-grown plants with longer life-span and less travel-miles involved, I’ll stick with my artificial garlands and their very realistic scarlet poinsettia blooms - one of my small ways of reducing carbon imprint as well as waste at Christmas.

Granny Has the Happy Blues

Well, I blinked and almost missed them! Bluebells that is. We have several patches in the garden but somehow the swiftly-growing ground cover about them seems to have caught them up, partially eclipsing them. Besides which, it seems to me more of a forget-me-not year than a bluebell one.

Last week we drove to a venue way out in the countryside and I stopped to photograph the soft, smudgy blueness of forget-me-nots bordering a roadside ditch. They have been prolific this year in my back garden and also under the pine tree out front.

I love shades of blue in the borders, so triple-whammy this year as the Green Alkanet is adding sapphire shades to the backs of the beds (not to mention the nodding heads of purple-blue Granny's Bonnets!) No matter then that our clumps of bluebells are the Spanish variety, larger than our daintier native species; they have to be taller to be seen!

Up above all this verdant undergrowth and like a fluffy overlying coverlet, the ceonothus drapes itself and for the present, my whole world is bathed in a heavenly blue.

Myosotis sylvatica or wood forget-me-not, is a species of flowing plant in the family Boraginaceae, native to Europe. Spring-flowering, and occasionally pink, it is the familiar forget-me-not of our gardens and giving them represents a promise of remembrance, fidelity and faithfulness.