All Wet

In her Lens-Artist post this week, Tina invites us all to share photos that convey the theme of All Wet – things, people, places, feelings…. I happened to see her riveting grizzly bear images the morning following an all day light rain, and it prompted me to get out into the yard and take some snaps of some of my favourite plants, before the rising sun and rising breeze evaporated the tiny drops covering petal and foliage.

I spotted blue spikes emerging through the leaves, in the woods that cover a portion of the yard. It’s Cardamine doglassii, Purple Cress, a common spring ephemeral along woodland edges here. The flowers are weighted down by rain drops but within a few hours they were open and pointed towards the sky.

Emerging from the ground every spring is a patch of Canada Mayapple – Podophyllum peltatum. The leaves become a a large umbrella just 20 to 30cm from the ground, and form large colonies that last until the heat of summer arrives.

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This tulip variety, Red Emperor, has a long, irregular oval flower shape when open. At night the petals close and form weird and very irregular shapes, perfect for catching rain drops.

I love how some plants, especially as they are emerging in the spring, have natural cups to capture rain or dew drops. Lupins are a good example.

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A few Allium also have quite large natural rain catching hollows from which the flower bud will emerge. A. Karataviense on the left, with its wide, Hosta-like leaves, and A. Globemaster on the right.

This is the image that first captured my imagination. We had been successful in keeping a small poinsettia alive and well since early December, but then in April, I let the soil go dry a few times too many. That, it seems, is not a good thing for these tropical plants (I’ve seen them grown as hedges in southern California!) and it was losing most of the green leaves below the bright red bracts. I tossed it on the compost heap and, thanks to above freezing temperatures and on and off showers, it stubbornly stayed quite bright and beautiful. Taunting me. Chiding me for giving up on it too easily. I don’t know if this is a metaphor for life or an extreme example of guilty anthropomorphism. Whatever. If it snows tomorrow as predicted those leaves will no long be red and cheery.