a verge or two

Oh, such delightful eruptions of iris this year on the road side – starting off in early April and full on in recurring displays through to May. It’s the outward curve in the stem of the plant set off by the cascading flower en double tier that is show stopping . . . seen in groups around the most modest sentiers. Of course, they love the drainage that a bank offers up. All photos from the roads and sentiers around the village . . .   

 . . . in some points a garrigue type planting has taken hold – a tapestry of cistus, thymes, lavandins, rosmarin, euphorb and aphyllanthes that looks like sisyrinchium, merge in a tapestry effect which can look shrubby and rough – many plants in this habitat have aromatic foliage and thus oils and monoterpenes will leach into the soils from leaf litter. This asserts the dominance of a plant over its companion and ensures the characateristic open spacing and, so restricted flora in the garrigue. 

And sometimes opuntia (prickly pear) throw out an aria on a bank situation (drainage again) – soprano, so middle C to high A, methinks – just to disconcert and mix in the exotic. 

From up close of the verges into longer views and back to understanding what this small in size,  agricultural in commerce, landscape here ( St Pons la Clam) is about – vines, apricots and cherries and asperges . . . 

from dawn to dusk the gatherers are at it. Lifting asperges – green and white – for the marketplace. The plastic that is used to force is a horrid development – presumably in the past sacking was employed . . . or the produce wasn’t forced.

The fruit is turning red already and promises much. 

In another environment, but not far away, this little blue flowering gem was noted in the verge – buglossoides purpurocaerulea – it’s a borage – but the little sweet thing below remains unnamed. I think its lamiaceae . . . 

 . . . and saw it wandering around St Gervais, near Bagnols, on the route to discovering Les Célettes, a charming hameau with good vineyard, Domaine Sante Anne, and with a forgotten but discovered again feel.:

Of course the poem stands as it does and now the term ‘weed’ is known as the right plant but in the wrong place but my thought on selecting it is that ‘they move in and colonise, if the environment suits them, and that’s what I love. Ah plants, so much more beautiful than human beings. 

Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm! –
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marked by curse,
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, look, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I.  Theodore Roethke

epitaph: roadside in the Camargue today – iris pseudoacorus in fosse plein d’eau.