floral – TRAVEL WORDS

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Work of Art

This week, share a photo of something that’s art to you.

This particular photo has been given a watercolour ‘art’ effect. Enlarge for more detail and clarity.

Pulsatilla vulgaris

The flowers bloom in early spring, which leads to the common name Pasque flower, since Pasque refers to Easter and Passover. Pasque flowers are the early harbingers of Spring, appearing before the leaves have fully emerged and it is a low-growing, clump-forming, perennial.

To me there is nothing more that represents a work of art than nature. A flower, from seed to decay, is truly magical.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Spring

Ash has asked us to respond to this week’s challenge by showing you signs of spring.

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring”
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

If you would like to see what others have come up with for this challenge then go to the Daily Post @ WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

Snakes Head Fritillaries — Snakes Head Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris)

These are just a tiny few of the spring flowers I have had the joy to see and photograph over the past two weeks in the south-west and south-east. More spring beauties can be found on my Earth Laughs in Flowers blog as I begin a month of magnolias, camellias, peonies and azaleas and rhododendrons.

A Word a Week Challenge: Contrast

Every week Sue from ‘A Word in Your Ear’ dips into her English Oxford dictionary and picks a word on the page that it falls open at. The challenge is to post a photograph, poem, story – whatever the genre you like best to describe what that word means to you.

This week’s challenge is C O N T R A S T (click to join in with the challenge)

On the colour wheel you can see which colours contrast with each other as they lie opposite on the wheel e.g. magenta and lime, blue and yellow .

And it just so happens that this week I bought myself a bunch of lovely purple tulips with a contrasting yellow centre. Perfect for this challenge I thought 🙂

Originally cultivated in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) Tulips were imported into Holland in the sixteenth century. Each year, theTulip Festival is organized in the Noordoostpolder. Held in the middle of the tulip fields, this flower festival runs from late April to early May.

The word tulip is probably derived from the Persian for turban because of a perceived resemblance of the shape of a tulip flower to that of a turban.

A Word a Week Challenge: Violet

This week’s challenge is VIOLET (click to join in with the challenge)

Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.

Violet (the colour) sits somewhere between the shades of blue and red. Purple is closer to red, violet is closer to blue and more subdued than purple. So violet can be mauve or lilac or lavender – soft muted shades that lean towards the blue end of the spectrum.

So here are a few of my violet shades captured in flowers:

(click on an image to enlarge)