Canna Lily Flowers

Maui Punch

Cleopatra

I

Picaso

Lucifer

President

Orange Crush

Pink Circuma

The pink circuma is very easily grown. It likes full, even harsh sun, ample moisture, and mulch around its base, an environment similar to that of bananas. It has no pests here in South Louisiana zone 8b, not even a lawnmower once or twice. It has a weakness for cheap fertilizer and lizards.

It freezes to the ground here every winter, and returns every spring just like this. A mature clump would stand 6 to 7 feet tall (foilage) and 5 feet wide, the flowers are 20 inches tall.

It looks pretty good in front of Washingtonia Robusta.   (Mexican Fan Palm)

Nymphaea Almost Black

Acquired this one last late summer, and with big hopes, put it in a 100 gallon tub all by itself. Puny little thing clung to life no matter how I babied it.

Fertilized it, kept the worms off, prayed, no matter, it wanted to stay puny. So I figured to hell with it, I'll replace it in the spring.

It must have heard me and grew rhizome all winter, because starting late February it came on like a freight train. Prettiest thing.
I want you to tell me how, in fine detail_ and slowly.

Louisiana Iris

Professor Claude

Sea Wisp

Delta Dawn

unknown

Yellow Flag Iris

Louisiana Iris

Ann Chowning

Louisiana Iris begin blooming late march for about 30 - 40 days if you have several colors, as each color blooms at a slightly different time.

Colors range from many hundreds of imaginative combinations and shades of each - a violet red, purple, violet, blue, white, yellow, a very dark almost black purple. They look especially, mysteriously beautiful in the low light levels of early morning or late evenings and rainy days.

They grow well in pots, especially big ones and tubs as some varieties multiply quickly. Plant them in humus rich, well composted well drained soil of the shrub border garden, or in 1 to 6 inches of fresh water along ponds, ditches, and marshes.

It will come to me

 Make sure the "roots only" are in the soil, and the rhizome is at ground level, where it can breath. This probably will require staking the plant cut back to about half. As the spring becomes summer, plants go dormant, become a little shabby at times in the heat, so don't worry it's not dying, it will get green again in fall and winter, here in the south.

Eolian

Her Highness

Louisiana Iris perform their best in natural lowlands where a slowing of water velocity causes nutrient rich silts to settle along with the winters shed leaves, the organic matter from fields and pastures in upper regions.

This is the native environment of one of the last of the fresh water plants before the water flow meets the salt of the  Ocean.

These are some older favorites I've grown for most of my life, a couple of which I collected from the marshes in South Louisiana while fishing. I can only load four images it seems, so I'll post several times.

Black Gamecock

Salmon Fishing Alaska, Sermon of the Salmon

Alaska is on a scale most people can not comprehend, an unimaginably huge and awesome landscape, where the fragility of life can be plainly seen, and the seriousness of a dangerous beauty, felt into the marrow of one's bones.

Be stupid here cousin, and it will kill you_ like yesterday.

Spend time here, and the knowledge of these uncommonly big vistas will live fresh in your mind all the days of your life, a special appreciation and admiration will be  burned into your heart. Alaska will make you feel alive and understand how thin and raveled is the thread of life.

This friendly stranger taught me how to rig for Silver Salmon, which is the preferred catch by the local people and most fishermen on upper Kenai Peninsula in the fall, and I caught a nice one in no time flat. There are so many, one just has to run in to your hook.

It was a surprising and explosive ten seconds. It almost spooled me. I had no idea a fish so big could swim so fast or pull so hard in water half as deep as the fish itself. I didn't know that snagging was the only legal method to fish some species and others must be caught by mouth. I just thought I was a fisherman.

However, upon seeing Salmon in such great numbers and witnessing their great sacrifice, I lost all interest in catching any more than one. I realized that the wondrous sight of them was what I was there for. It's purely amazing.

Imagine the thousands of Rivers and thousands of miles of Selfless Salmon like these, all on a mission to perpetuate the circle of life, none to cheat, not one to lie. To whom might they preach?.

Most of the salmon in these images are Chinook Salmon in their spawning season (The red and pink fish) which are out of season during this trip, but there are Silver Salmon and really big Rainbow Trout swimming with these Chinook, only their color really blends in well with the color of the rocks, so they're harder to see.

The Alaska Salmon spawn is a sight to behold, a lesson of a lifetime no man should live a day without, lest he be incomplete. From the deck of a ship, 80 feet above the ocean or so, in very clear water, I've seen masses of Salmon, as deep as I could see. Far into the distance there was Salmon thick enough to walk on.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up cousin.

I've looked for God all my days, and believe I will see His face. I study the earth and the hearts of men, read the finest words of so many scholars and Holy Men of history, but they can most definitely not minister the way the Salmon do. They cannot sing it, they cannot act it out in such a beautiful way, and this wonder is accomplished in silence, by the sight of it.

 Only the Mountains, the Stars, and the Salmon can do this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_run

Mission San Xavier Del Bac, Tuscon AZ

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Xavier_del_Bac

Formosa Azalea

Eden is a bird only there for a second,
to be remembered and anticipated.  

What is time in an eternity ?





A garden where I walked.

7 Angels, 7 Lessons

1. Loneliness is the deadliest disease.















2. Dishonor is forever, too harsh a sentence, in which the accused and Judge are both convicted and put to death.











 3.  There is an evil in every little thing, so long as a man knows of it.











4. Some sit in the front of their church because they believe they are better than others. One who sits in the last pew, searches hearts.









5. He understood the odds were stacked against him, his chances slim, so he disavowed the hurtful ways of his father, and refined himself. He pursued basic truths proven by the finest minds of History, and his heart became true.

6. The greatest comfort in modern medicine is kind encouragement.

7. Paradise must be planted from a seed.





Camellias of my Garden
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia

Understand What You See, Care About What You Do

What do you see ?

Art defines the line between the man and the animal. It is evidence of undeniable wonder in a sometimes ordinary task. Once performed, it is timeless.

Wise men stumble to describe what simple souls can shape with the love in their hands. Language, Religion, politics, color of skin have no influence over it.

This is a Holy Lesson as good as any, universally understood, one that most preachers know nothing of.










You must care cousin, in the place you are given. Be good at what you do. Put beautiful things all around you. Paradise is not a time, it's an infinitude, and you have to build it, it's not free.

Life and Love

The unfairness of life needs no reason,
just keep on living and look for love.

Takes long to learn
what's especially pleasing,
is not in the man but in the season,

The breath_ the_ glance_
the sparkle fleeting.

Should no one make the love,
and you not give,
then what becomes it,
so perfect and lonely_
in no heart to live.


 

Place Where The Rivers Meet

Young Man,

Question the least of things,
understand what is true,

that all things false are forgotten,
what you believe, be it unfounded,
was never.

What is a man?
So then make yourself.



Northwest Territories, Yukon

One Fine Greenhouse

It is truly representative of a humble spirit in earnest question,

a worthy prayer scribed in completeness with admiration to a Most High Order.

This is the role of men.



Greenhouse at Shangri La Garden  Orange, TX

A note for #1

Cousin, be aware of  the darkness into which men are born, that each man by his own account must overcome singly, a state of denial / spirit of disbelief / ignorance determined to stay / emptiness / untruth that exists in every man in every faith.


Image of Arenal Volcano, La Fortuna Church     San Carlos, Costa Rica