Tuesday 25 May 2010

In The Garden

The descriptions of the gardens, the flowers, the countryside in One Fine Day are sown throughout the book. Here are some of my favourite...
'The flowers rampaged and ate each other, red-hot poker devouring lily, aster swallowing bergamot, rose gulping jasmine.'

'...to pick a bunch of flowers... short heads of poppy, anchusa, raspberry-coloured sweet cicelys, a pansy, two pinks. Bunched tightly together they looked charming.'

'The cottage gardens were bright pocket handkerchiefs embroidered with rice-paper crinkled poppy, peppery lupin, stout rose and Canterbury bell.'



'...spires of rose and yellow, patches of blue and velvet maroon with dark eyes from which... the wild convolvulus hung its white trumpet and the thistle thrust a purple rosette four steely feet into the air.'


'The syringa... hung white and gold in the sun's warmth, lolling, showering scent and golden powder...'


'... there a rakish tuft on a slender spray of pink and palerpink dog-rose.'




'seeing Laura in a print dress picking extraordinary blue and flame-pink trumpet shaped flowers from a white picket fence.'
There's a metaphore somewhere about the relationship in how they view their lives and how nature blossoms, grows and quite often it's all out of our control....
source, source, source, source, source, source, source

4 comments:

  1. Their garden sounds amazing! I've always wanted a beautiful flower garden but unfortunately my thumb is not very green. We just put down wildflower seeds and I'm really hoping they grow into a gorgeous colorful bed they way they do at my mom's house.

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  2. We walked past some beautiful wild flowers in our local community garden this evening. I love that colourful wild garden look.

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  3. This book sounds really lovely (I love flowers in books), who's it by?

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  4. It's by Mollie Panter-Downes and really would fit into your reading Virago novels as it is one. It's a lovely slim book to read.

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Ooh how lovely more stripes on the page...
Thank you for taking the time.