Wayward flowers

click photo to enlarge
"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley"
Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scottish poet and lyricist

Many people will recognise the lines of Rabbie Burns quoted above. They come from his poem, "To a mouse, on turning her up in her nest with the plough", though it is common today for the second line to be replaced with the more modern, "Go often askew". But how many, I wonder, recall what follows these words? The lines continue thus: "An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!" Read in its fullness Burns' words will strike a chord with many - we have all planned something with great care and the expectation of a favourable outcome, only to be thwarted and disappointed when it all goes wrong.

I thought of these words the other day when I was casting round the garden for a few photographs of our flowering bulbs. In the main we prefer to group like with like so that each variety of flower shows itself off to full effect. However, as I moved from flower bed to flower bed a noticed a couple of bulbs that had, as they say "made their own arrangements". Or perhaps a bird, mole or squirrel had helped them out and moved a bulb to a different location. The first was a couple of tulips among the bluebells a real contrast of deep red against the softer blue of the smaller flowers. The second was a narcissus among the tulips. I recall these being planted in groups alongside each other, but now they seem to be starting to intermingle.

I'm not, despite Burns' words, disappointed by this disruption of our "best laid scheme". It seems to me that sometimes our plans go wrong with positive consequences, and something that has "gang...agley" can offer, unexpectedly, a "promis'd joy" that was unforeseen.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Photo Title: Tulips Among The Bluebells
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spalding tulips under trees

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I have a particular liking for tulips. I haven't counted, but I think they will be the most frequently depicted flower on this blog. The Lincolnshire town of Spalding, and the area around it, has a long association with this flower. For many decades it has been grown in the locality both for the blooms and the bulbs, both of which are grown to be sold.

The now defunct Spalding Flower Parade featured hundreds of thousand of tulip blooms on imaginatively designed floats, and the event drew many people to the town to witness the spectacle. The other day we were in Spalding and had a look at Springfields Gardens, the area that sits alongside the purpose-built shopping centre and which makes shopping there bearable (for me anyway)!

We came across sunlit flower beds that featured a great variety of tulips and smaller numbers of other spring bulbs. This didn't surprise us. What did amaze us, however, was the sight that greeted us when we walked through the adjacent area of woodland. Large drifts of tulips had been planted there and were showing off beautifully in the dappled sunlight. It was most unusual to find this variety of flower growing in this kind of location, but it worked wonderfully well and I wondered why it wasn't done more often. The plants had managed to grow and bloom because they reached maturity before the leaf canopy was fully open and had begun restricting the amount of light that reached the ground beneath the branches - in much the same way that wild bluebells and ramsons manage to flower in this kind of setting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon 5D2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Life's riches

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The other day I saw a pair of lapwings displaying above a field. I suppose they were nesting there, and as they performed their characteristic aerial acrobatics, all the while making their distinctive call, they looked like they were celebrating simply being alive. When I lived in Lancashire lapwings nested in the field behind my house, and across the nearby pastures and uplands. Such are the particular nesting requirements of lapwings, that where I live now, in Lincolnshire, I have to travel to the coastal salt-marsh and uncultivated land to see them. Or so I thought until, when cycling near home, I spotted this solitary pair over a ploughed area. I hope they are successful in their endeavours.

I've been interested in birds since I was ten or eleven years of age. It was my teachers at primary school who sparked my deep love of natural history. Each Friday we would walk into the countryside and be shown the trees, flowers, birds and any other wildlife that was at hand. We learned the names and something of the biology of these living things. That teaching stayed with me, and like the best teaching, spurred me to find out more for myself. It is no exaggeration to say that it enriched my life enormously. When I first became involved in education I was surprised at how little children knew of the wildlife around them, and I was thankful for the knowledge that my teachers had given to me all those years before. On one occasion I asked a group of ten year old children to write down for me all the flowers they knew by name. The only three wild flowers most could name were (perhaps unsurprisingly) the dandelion, daisy and buttercup. They knew more cultivated flowers, naming the daffodil first, followed by the poppy, the rose, and the tulip. Various other well known flowers made an appearance. I thought then, and I think now, that people who can't name, and don't know anything about the plants and animals around them miss so much. The simple act of going for a walk is much less interesting than it could be!

Today's photograph shows one of those more widely known flowers - the tulip. This one, that I photographed on a rainy afternoon, was past its best, its colours darkening prior to the petals falling off.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tulipomania

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"Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, seamen, footmen, maid servants, even chimney sweeps and old clothes women dabbled in tulips."
from "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay (1814-1889), Scottish poet, journalist and song-writer

The present turmoil in the financial markets demonstrates that mass delusion is a recurring feature of mankind. Today's fantasy infects not just financiers, bankers and politicians, but the general public, and hinges on the belief that we can lend and spend money that we don't possess without any adverse consequences ensuing. In his book of 1841, noted above, Charles Mackay wrote about a number of delusions of his day and earlier, including The Mississippi Scheme, The South Sea Bubble and Tulipomania. Looking at today's money markets and reading through Mackay's work one is reminded of the cynical saying about the value of history: "the one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history"!

Tulipomania centred around the growing of tulips in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands). This began following the introduction of the bulbs into the country from Turkey in 1593. Such was the interest in the bulbs that they became a coveted luxury item and status symbol. Exotic colours were bred and named after famous Dutch admirals. The price of bulbs rocketed. In 1635 40 bulbs sold for 100,000 florins: this at a time when a ton of butter cost only 100 florins. Individuals could make so much money through tulips that speculation began, with people selling contracts for bulbs not planted. Eventually the bubble burst and many were ruined. Tulipomania is widely thought to have precipitated the economic depression that affected the Low Countries in subsequent years. All this sounds very familiar in the light of the 1990s "dotcom" crash and the current falling house prices precipitated by reckless lending and borrowing.

Today's image is of some rather humble tulips that cost very little to buy and nurture. I intercepted them as they journeyed between my garden and the living room, and set the Wedgwood Queen's Ware vase up in front of a black background for a still life photograph. The trick in making tulips stand up (rather than flop as they are inclined to do) is to push a pin through each flower stalk. But I wanted them to arch a little, so these are pre-pin-prick tulips!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16.0
Shutter Speed: 1.6
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off