23 January 2008

Things I like about summer, IV

Green leaves and grapes on the vines.

June at La Renaudière

I'm still getting used to seasons, after so many years in San Francisco, where there aren't any. It's amazing to me that summer can be so different from winter. In SF, we had flowers in the garden in December and January as in July and August, but we had cold, windy, gray weather in "summer."

As you might have seen from recent pictures, there are no leaves or grapes on the vines in January at La Renaudière.

3 comments:

  1. it's hard to believe that the leafless amputated woody stumps you were photographing the other day will, in less than six months, have produced such lushness.


    THE SEED SHOP.
    by Muriel Stuart

    Here, in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
    Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
    Forlorn as ashes, shriveled, scentless, dry-
    Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

    Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,
    Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,
    Though birds pass over, unremembering,
    And no bee suck here roses that were his.

    In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams,
    A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
    That will drink deeply of a century's streams,
    These lilies shall maker summer on my dust.

    Here in their safe and simple house of death,
    Sealed in their shells a million trees leap;
    Here I can grow a garden with my breath,
    And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

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  2. Down here on on the Central Coast of California we definitely have seasons, but they are subtle. We have frost, frozen, and suddenly mild. That's enough seasonal for me.

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  3. The colours are gorgeous. The grapes look so promising...
    "C'est à boire, à boire, à boire.
    C'est à boire qu'il nous faut!"

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