A Sense of Place

I've grown this Habranthus from seed, so I'm particularly pleased to see it finally in bloom. It has taken two years for it to reach blooming size and I'm happy to see several other flower spikes emerging out of the soil.

I am posting again a picture of a yellow and white striped Calibrachoa, a flower that looks to me to have been created by a confectioner or an artist from the studios of Disney or Warner Brothers. Its otherworldly looks seem to belong to the super-real world of Animation,which relies on an exaggerated visual interpretation of real life in order to give it a believablity and to hold the interest of its audience. At least I hope that is the case or perhaps it's just that the majority in the west are blind to the complexities of the plant world and have reduced flowers and trees to crude caricatures. By contrast it was interesting to see in Ghibli Studios new feature film Arietty how Japanese artists had rendered the natural world in the background art of this film, where flowers were recognizable and almost botanically correct and still avoided the realism that can deaden the imagined world of Animation. The striped Calibrachoa that a follower cleverly described as a "Circus F...

It took only one flower on the Liatris ligulistylis to attract the Monarch butterflies into the garden. In fact I noticed the Monarch first and knew that the Liatris must have come into bloom. A single flower had filled the air with excited butterflies, confirming L. ligulistylis as the ultimate Monarch magnet. The first flower on Liatris ligulistylis. A Monarch butterfly drawn to the Liatris flower.