Early Saturday Sunshine

Twas a cold night but I awoke yesterday to bright sunshine. Looking out of the window I saw the early low sunshine lighting up the flowers of the tall grass – Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’. Its not often that I catch the sunlight coming from this direction so I got-up, got the camera and went out into the chilly dawn dressed only in pyjama trousers.

The photo below is taken from the back-door and shows off the giant reed – Arundo donax – as well as the leaves of all the other plants in this part of the garden:

The next photo shows Arundo donax catching the early sunlight:

The next photo shows the scene that prompted my early morning photographic expedition. It is of the red flowers of the tall grass Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’ with the sun shining through them:

The following 2 photographs again show Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’ but also show the fronds of the Tree Fern – Dicksonia antarctica. This is my tallest Tree Fern at about 6ft high but I have always struggled to get decent photos of it. The direction of the early morning sunlight seems to show-off the fronds very well:

It was good to have the sunshine but the cold night was a taster of the coming autumn and winter. I’m already thinking of my summer holiday next year!!

Arundo donax

My last post ( like The Last Post) included a description of the variegated form of Arundo donax. I tried to get a decent photograph of Arundo donax growing in my garden but found that the stems and leaves get lost amongst the other stuff growing nearby. So – I tried a Photoshop technique, known as – ‘ out-of-bounds’ – to isolate the said Arundo. Here is the result:

As you can see, it is a mighty big grass!

Monday and work looms! I won’t go into any more detail, except to say that ‘Arundo’ reminds me of a track by the band – The Nice – from the 60’s. The keyboardist – Keith Emerson  - went on to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I saw their debut at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 – Gosh, I’m old!

( the track was actually called ‘Rondo’)

Stems

Strolling through the Musa acres in the late afternoon of yesterday, a scene caught my eye which I will relate to you (I know . . . . Yawn!).

I have a path that is quite a bit lower than the surrounding planting beds. This means that the already tall plants seem even taller. So, I was looking through their stems . . . photo below:

The stems in question include Banana (Musa sikkimensis), Ginger Lily (Hedychium coccineum 'Tara') and the variegated grass – Arundo donax 'Variegata'. (There is other stuff too)

This year Arundo donax ‘Variegata’ has done quite well. It always disappoints me a bit as it is has nothing like the vigour of the plain green Arundo donax. The ordinary Arundo grows very rapidly making stems of 16ft in one season. I have a couple of clumps of this but I only allow 3 or 4 stems to grow from each clump – that is all you need!

I’ll see if I can capture a decent photo of the plain green Arundo donax for a future post.

By the way . . . Where has the sunshine gone? Where has the Summer gone?