AGAPANTHUS and a CANNA FLOWER


More typical summer weather has returned to the South West Coast of Victoria in the last week.


This photo was taken yesterday, Saturday morning, on Jan Juc beach at high tide. A lovely walk before breakfast.


Later in the day we went for a walk in the Iron Bark Basin nature reserve, part of the Great Otway National Park. There, we were delighted to see a large echidna fossicking for ants among rotting fallen branches.
 

Also, we saw this Rosy Hyacinth Orchid, Dipodium roseum. This is a beautiful, relatively tall ground orchid flowering at this time of year. It is much more robust looking than many of the local ground orchids and its appearance is more like that which we expect of orchids.


Meanwhile, with my ikebana eyes watching the world around me, I have been very aware of the large number of blue flowering Agapanthus in the gardens of our neighbourhood. This particular clump is growing in the 'nature strip' of a friend of ours. ('nature strip', noun, Australian English: a piece of publicly owned land between the boundary of a house or other building and the street, typically planted with grass. Definition from Oxford Languages.)  The blue in these flowers was a little deeper than those in the garden proper. I had been thinking of arranging some, and the decision was crystallised when I noticed an intense orange flower had appeared on the Canna Lily that I included in the post of 13th December.


Orange, being on the opposite side of the colour wheel, makes the strongest contrast to blue. So the contrast gives the blue an extra 'zing'. I have also created this ikebana in a dark blue suiban. In the process of making this ikebana I removed almost all of the open flowers because the unopened buds are a much darker blue than the inner aspect of the petals. It also reduced the size of the flower heads, which worked better as I was wanting to emphasise the vertical movement of the the stems.

Finally, you may be interested in an on-line demonstration being given by my colleague Emily Karanikolopoulos for the Mumbai Chapter of Ikebana International. Here are the details: Friday 15th January 2021 at 5:30pm (AEDT). The time is Australian Eastern Daylight-saving Time.


Or by Zoom at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87386575321

Meeting ID: 873 8657 6321


Greetings from Christopher

9.00 pm

10th January 2021



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)