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This is not a blog about flowers.
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Were it a blog about flowers it would have a name like "Owen's Flower Blog", or some such.
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If you have been following the goings on here for any length of time, you know that I have penchants for wrecked or rusting cars, roadkill, abandoned factories or houses (my dream houses), cemeteries, junkyards, broken toilets, zebras, the circus, and graffiti of all sorts, yes, just about anything except flowers.
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In fact this is not a blog about anything specific, but rather everything in general, at least, everything pertaining to the above mentioned themes, or anything related to them in any way.
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This is not a blog about flowers because I didn't want my blog to look like a seed catalog. Seed catalogs are easy to find and are full of big glossy flower pictures of every variety of flower under the sun.
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But I don't have anything against flowers, or photographs of flowers. In fact, now that I'm entering my old age, after having had a good fifty years of childhood, I rather enjoy looking at flowers and photographs of flowers. For instance, Mad Lynne Louciao just did a lovely piece about peonies at Décolleté Glimpses.
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Or visit Roxana, at the Floating Bridge of Dreams, who just did a thoroughly hypnotizing symphony in shades of lilac. Ok, that one wasn't only about flowers. She wove a few strands of feminine mystery into it as well. But on second thought, what's the difference between flowers and feminine mystery ?
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And Jeff of the incomparable Life Is Beautiful has recently been doing a long series celebrating nature and flowers; his coquelicot (poppy) series was particularly enchanting.
How I would like to meet Lynne and Roxana and Jeff someday, to chat about affinities for flower photos. . . or about anything other than affinities for flower photos . . .
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I mentioned in a comment on the post just below this one that life at the straightjacket factory has been totally crazy of late. There has been an incredible increase in orders for straightjackets recently, and the demand shows no signs of abating. In fact, it is accelerating in a rather frightening manner.
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I'm not really sure what to conclude from this situation, but the economic trend for heavily increased demand for straightjackets would seem to indicate that ever increasing numbers of human beings are losing their marbles. And not just a minor loss of a marble or two, but a major mass exodus of marbles from many individuals' marble collections is occurring.
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There could be a multitude of reasons to explain this worrying phenomenon. There are alot of subjects that any previously sane person could go insane about these days. It might be that the great marble manufacturer in the sky is calling his marbles home. I'm not going to go into them all right here and now in any detail, as I don't want to contribute to driving any of you good people further around the bend than you already are, but the long list of liabilities associated with the human race is taking on legendary proportions. Just look at what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico. Pollution, arms, violence, drug wars, political wars, religious wars, illiteracy, idiocy, deforestation, whole species going extinct, nuclear weapons looming, terrorism, vandalism . . . I think it is safe to say that the barbarians are at the gates. We have glimpsed the enemy and it is us.
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However, all of this is great for straightjacket sales; so I cannot complain. Our straightjackets, by the way, come in three sizes : Mildly Drooling, Seriously Slobbering, and Furiously Foaming at the Mouth.
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But I now have a few days away from the buttons-up-the-back jacket factory. And I hope to make the most of them. Today, for example, I went out and found a field full of brilliantly orange poppies to revel in. Like something to rival the poppies in the Wizard of Oz. The only thing missing here was an elegant 19th century lady carrying a parasol, wearing a billowing white hooped skirt, if you can picture her . . .
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If you can't smell their heady fragrance yet, then you're not close enough . . .
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There were't only poppies in the field . . .
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If you recall the glowing yellow rapeseed fields from a few posts down, this is a rapeseed leaf, now past its prime. Some things in life get better with age . . .
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These roses were in a small cemetery near here which I stopped in this afternoon for a moment.
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And these last few images are from our own yard. I cannot claim to having any gardening skills, these specimens of carnations and pivoines (peony, for you Lynne) and roses and sage seem to be thriving despite all the tender loving neglect they are accustomed to at our hands. . .
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And I only just figured out this very evening that "sauge" in French means "sage" in English. Sometimes I'm a bit slow. The music which could accompany this piece can be found here.
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And is this last a form of snowbrush perhaps ? The serrated leaves are surely a clue ?
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Finally, to reward you for your patience with all the flowers, you are welcome to try one of these chocolate oysters. That's right, chocolate oysters, from our favorite vacation destination in Brittany; Carantec, or as written in Breton here, Karanteg. Les huitres de Karanteg. They're rather tasty. Actually it was the red paper they come wrapped in which reminded me of the poppy field today. And remember, a flower photo a day keeps the straightjacket people away.
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