Category: Plants

Cemetery Flowers

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

Cemetery Flowers

Besides from the bunches laid with care,
There’s plenty of blooms around –
Peacefully scenting reverent air
And rising out of the ground.
And looking as though they have always grown there,
Spreading from grave to grave, unbound.

Lilies creep around the edges,
Speedwell bids the souls farewell,
And lichen colours urns and ledges,
Where the lady’s bedstraws dwell
Wrought-iron railings form the hedges,
Butterflies enchant their spell.

Yews, of course, have long been prized,
With folklore running deep,
And cypresses are well-advised
For the greenery they keep,
And Trees of Heaven, naturalised,
Like some who lie asleep.

Wych-hazel makes herself at home,
But cherries are out of place –
Confetti is such a frivolous foam
That doesn’t leave a trace.
Forget-me-nots, meantime, will roam,
Wherever they find a space.

The dead, of course, don’t care what’s living up there,
They’ve other concerns,
But graveyards are gardens we all must share,
Be we friends or weeds or worms.
And ev’ry flower we all can spare
Will help us to come to terms.

I deliberately tried to shake up the rhythm a bit between verses, to see if it could still flow. As for the location, I have visited before here and here (and, more pertinent to the season at hand, over here).

Floriography

~ Toastingfork ~ 2 Comments
Choosing by George Watts

Floriography

I wanted to speak the language of flowers,
Just like my heroines of old.
But how can the secrets of petals be ours
When meeting in Winter’s cold ?
I guess there’s holly and mistletoe,
And snowdrops still to come, perhaps ?
But love, I fear, has yet to grow,
And plenty of time to lapse…

I wanted to win you with floral wooing,
Now that Spring has raised his head –
But tulips are for financial ruin,
And lilies are for the dead.
I guess there’s always the dandelion,
Though who sees the beauty beneath the weed ?
Our love, I fear, is swiftly dying,
Like daffodils gone to seed.

I wanted to cast such blossoming spells,
With Summer so rampant and velveteen –
But buttonhole-sunflowers smother lapels,
And roses come purple and green.
I guess there’s just too much to choose –
Exotic, or native ?  We cannot be both.
So love, I fear, is swamped for a muse,
And trapped in the undergrowth.

I wanted to breathe the tongue of the blooms,
But who remembers the code these days ?
And now that Autumn is blowing our rooms,
It feels too late for bouquets.
I guess, though, dahlias could be for darlings ?
And conkers for fun, and pumpkins for screams ?
For love, I feel, will still find it charming,
Whatever it thinks it all means.

Leaving Inktober behind, there is just time for a seasonal bouquet before things get spook-ay...

Pyrophiles

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
The 3rd Element – Fire by John Rowe

Pyrophiles

Some plants only germinate through fire,
Waiting out the years
Until the tragedy appears.
They need the forest hotter, tinder dryer,
Even dropping oil
To make a tarpit of the soil.
But there hasn’t been a fire through here, I’m told,
In fifty years of cold –
I guess these trees are all the same-age-old.

Their life-cycle needs the flames be fanned,
They need to taste the char
Before they’ll shoot a single spar.
They need apocalypse to sweep the land
To birth their phoenix seeds,
To grow within the ash of weeds.
And there are even beetles who must birth
Within the hell-scorched earth,
(Though salamanders don’t, for what it’s worth).

Pepper-Leper

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Steaming Hot Peppers by Russ Mackensen

Pepper-Leper

That subtle hint of rosemary,
That teasing tang of thyme,
Where parsley peps with a pleasing edge
And fennel venerates our veg.
The wisdom of the sage is free
To sing the zing of lime,
As basil dances on our tongues,
And spearmint sweetens-up our lungs.

But herbs in all their subtlety
Are pinched-off in their prime –
Just swamped beneath the mono-taste
With which are dished are debased
As cooks commit with careless glee
A culinary crime
Of blanding soups and stews and rice
With boring bucketfuls of spice.

Horn of Plenty

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Cornucopia by Marina Tsuzuki

Horn of Plenty

Nature’s abundance
Is only abundant
Because of our breeding and care.
We keep safe with fences
From predators hellbent
On forcing our people to share.

We took weedy grasses
And made them triumphant
By winnowing pearls from the tat.
Through thousands of passes
We bred out redundants,
And kept only those who grew fat.

We took crabby apples
And looked for those farthest
From regular bitter and small.
So don’t pray at chapels
For bountiful harvests –
It’s farmers who let us grow tall !

We beefed-up our cattle,
And fluffed-up our sheep,
And we hen-pecked our hens to lay more.
We’ve long waged the battle
’Gainst ringworm and creep,
And upping our yields by the score.

And yes, it’s true sometimes
We’ve made matters worse
In our efforts to keep us all fed.
But we’ll undo such crimes
As we learn from the curse,
In our bid to be better well-bred.

But to reap all we sow
Could yet come to a stop
If we don’t keep our labours up still.
The hard row to hoe
For the cream of the crop
Could succumb to the dew of the mill.

Nature’s abundance
Is only abundant
Because of our breeding and care.
It takes great expense,
But it’s very well spent,
Till the earth is encouraged to share.

Garden Overspills

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment

Garden Overspills

Low branches over pavements,
Should I bob or step out in the road ?
Who leaves wych-elms any which-how,
Never pruned, and deeply downward-bowed ?
Though less likely misbehaving,
More likely negligence at fault.
I ought to hack them off right now,
But more than like I get done for assault.

Double-deckers punch right through,
But my head has to duck beneath each stalk.
It’s worse when it’s been raining,
And I get a hairwash thrown into my walk.
But appletrees, and conkers too,
Are lack-of-headroom serial abusers –
Lurking, swelling, for each braining –
As the Autumn comes, so come the bruises.

Wild Barley

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Barley by Michael Chu

Wild Barley

Once, all this was fields,
Before the semis and the lawns –
But their ghost still haunts the verges
Where the stinging nettle spawns,
The brambles form a makeshift hedge,
The foxes keep the rabbits clear,
And the accidental barley waits
For the fresh suburban beer.

Once, all this was pasture,
Till the Guinea pigs replaced the sheep –
Yet deer still nibble round the edge,
And moles have penetrated deep.
The thistles form a pop-up wood,
The owls invade the lean-to shed,
And the reawakened barley waits
For the local deli’s bread.

This straggly mess looks more like the cultivated variety’s disreputable cousin, Wall Barley. But even this is now being used as a food, and what can be more artisanal than that ?

Flore Pleno

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Photo by Cristhian Cabra on Pexels.com

Flore Pleno

Double roses are showy but barren,
Turning stamens into yet more petals,
Living the bachelor life.
Even if they still make pollen,
Bees can’t push through all those petals,
Leaving them with no midwife.
Yet these are the roses in bouquets,
To symbolise our multilayered love
Of loud and overdressed grooms.
But dog roses are where bees graze –
They’re wide-open with stamens full of love
And hips full of future blooms.

Potato Blossom

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Potato Flower by rcstanley

Potato Blossom

Two-toned, long nosed, petals conjoined.
Such pretty flowers, so rarely seen –
So full of danger, so full of class,
Yet snipped-off to plump-up the tubers, alas.
Was that how these had been purloined ?
Too toxic to keep in a garden that’s clean ?
Yet someone had kept them, and set them in glass
As they gingerly lowered them into a vase.

There’s something illicit in bolted blooms,
In the flowers we’re not meant to see –
The propellers of rocket, the lilac of chive,
The pom-poms of garlic, the lettuce alive.
Gardeners always link flowers with doom,
Or as a time-waster, delaying the pea –
But hold back the harvest, and unwheel the barrow
For the scarlet of runners and saffron of marrow.

Bumble-Buffet

~ Toastingfork ~ Leave a comment
Bumble Bee by Nigel Jones

Bumble-Buffet

I don’t know why the alkanet
Is only served by bumblebees,
But ev’ry time I see a patch,
Then bumbles are their only catch.
Their flowers are so dainty, yet,
The smaller sort don’t visit these –
Perhaps their pollen is too heavy
For the lighter bees to ferry ?
The plants spring up in shady wet,
Against the walls, beneath the trees –
Perhaps these factors coalesced
Where bumbles like to build their nest ?
I hear such bugs are under threat
But here they gather as they please –
Where beefy bees are bumbling by,
To drink the deep blue blossoms dry.