Last of the summer flowers: And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Final farewell fotos of flowers  on the finca.  August 2014. Summer is passing…….

In August in Spain the weather is usually too hot and dry in the summer. The flowers start to fade and all seems rather dried out. Some flowers resist the parched conditions but most decide to allow their seeds to finish developing and be ready to disperse. This helps survival of the species  through a long dry summer. Deep roots keep the trees and other bushes in business.

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare and a different interpretation based on the natural world.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate,

Hoary Mullein

Candytuft

Knautia – small blue/ purple

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

And sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, ( the very hot sun as in Spain?)

And often is his gold complexion dimmed; ( English weather with clouds in the summer!)

And every fair from fair oft times declines,

By chance or by nature’s unchanging course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Silene

Shakespeare’s sonnet reflects the transience of beauty with the beauty of summer. But nature like the focus of his sonnet has an everlasting and ever changing beauty, beyond the flower! This is my  interpretation of a sonnet often thought to be about love. Maybe it can be about the intricate workings of nature that go beyond the transient beauty of a flower or a young man or woman! When we understand the true beauty of a person or of nature we can truly appreciate the deeper aspects of love, life and the natural world. Or was Shakespeare just trying to immortalise himself or his’dark lad..y’ love  with words?  His words offer such richness and are open to interpretation and appreciation through the ages and to different cultures.
I think I have found another angle on this sonnet and an admiration for what goes on beyond our sight within the seeds creating the changing seasons.

The extraordinary in the ordinary!

Having ignored taking any photos of all these common white flowers, one had to suddenly appear, larger than most, brightening up the view by our house and building site.

 

 

These wild white folk are abundant on the Finca late July and August. Some amazing red striped bugs also find some of them very attractive! Possibly the sap or are they laying eggs in the dried up flower head ?

 

Who are these common folk found all over Europe? And recently seen in the North of England. Well, we love their cultivated cousins and chop, chew and boil their orange roots. How did the wild one help us create the very edible one?

 

Wild in Spain and Spanish: wild violets and really wild birds

These tiny flowers were seen near the well in the very damp ground.

February on the Finca has seen the rain fall almost continuously for a week. However, on Sunday there was a little sunshine and wild violets were spotted. Thanks to the rain I have finally finished reading Macfarlane’s book about his journeys to wild places around the British Isles. Wild is a special word for him but as he ends up describing many different kinds of experiences of the wild it is interesting to think more about our own relationships with the wild. Here for February are two small wild things; the violet and the chaffinch. The birds in the woodland are so wild and wary I was delighted that even just one came to my table! In Spanish there are two words for wild : wild animals are ‘salvaje’ and wild plants are ‘sylvestre’. How might this division of meaning affect attitudes to the wild?

There really is one chaffinch enjoying some sunflower seeds in the rain.