Skip to main content

Christmas Countdown Local 2022 #23 and #24 Flowers



#23 : Flowers ... It doesn't seem like Christmas in our garden until the first of the  Corymbia ficifolia ( eucalyptus) flowers bloom. To me these beautiful gum blossoms  just say " Christmas in Australia" 
Petunias

In the garden, other red flowers bloom like geraniums and petunia  which is such a summer favourite that it is easy to associate it with Christmas. During a storm earlier in the year, we lost our iconic NSW Christmas bush.  We miss having this flowering at this time of the year in our garden, but a friend gave me a huge bunch of NSW Christmas Bush from her garden. It really wouldn't be Christmas without Christmas Bush!  

NSW Christmas Bush 



Corymbia ficicolia - red flowering gum 

An all time festive favourite is the poinsettia, which I have in the house in a pot... I always think of poinsettia as the flower on Christmas cards! 

Poinsettia



#24 : Less popular Christmas flowers.  Oriental lilies are more likely to be chosen for weddings than for Christmas. However, I read that oriental lilies are associated with the Virgin Mary, as a symbol of purity and rebirth.  These seem a very appropriate flower to decorate the house during Christmas. 


This year, Chinese forget-met-nots are growing beautifully in our garden.... I wondered if  they would have any connection to Christmas ? Blue  Forget- me-nots  are associated with Peace, healing, growth, development, intelligence, power, and communication.. My immediate response was yes - they are a flower of peace.  Traditional forget-me- nots are symbols of love and remembrance.  I think my hope that  I could find  the link between the festive season was that they merely bloom in Spring/  Summer. 
Cynoglossum amabile - Chinese forget me not 

  I think  these little blue flowers will have a place at Christmas , just because they will help me remember loved ones no longer with us at Christmas. There is always room for more flowers at Christmas.... but ... 
 Those  bold red blooms of poinsettia, Christmas Bush and flowering gum  will  remain "Christmas "  favourites for me. 
 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

Stitched Faces

I   've always enjoyed that imperfect line of  "not quite in control' free motion machine stitching....  I think it really suits creating portraits , giving them some character and even a quirkiness that hints of personality plus.  These ones below are from my " Red Cheeks" series from a couple of years ago, and are amongst my favourite stitched portraits.  The current Stitch Club ( textileartist.org) workshop, by  Batool Showghi has inspired me to stitch more this week. Batool , of course, is in complete control of her machine stitching and her works are exquisite and they tell a moving story.  ... " Working with paper, print, paint and stitch, her textile art bears witness to displacement, silenced women and the damage that authoritarian regimes impose on ordinary lives. Batool’s mixed media wall pieces are incredibly striking, but her artist books truly set her apart. Printed imagery of family photographs, birth certificate documents and her o...
Post a Comment
Read more

#the100dayproject : Inspiring Women Days 1 - 4

#The100DayProject is a *free* global art project that takes place online 🎨 E very year, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of creating. Anyone can participate . ​The idea is simple: choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and document and share the process online. 2026 is my 8th year of participating. I have stitched daily observations, painted my egg cup collection, collaged postcards and envelopes, written poems, explored colour palettes .... this year I am researching, sketching and stitching 100 inspiring women. Fortunately I purchased a piece of beautiful linen, with preprinted outlines of 100 women ... just one issue - the figures are tiny (height 6cm /2.5 ins) My first week started tentatively ... I thought I would start with Empress Wu, after whom I named my creative activity. This is when I discovered how difficult it is to applique and stitch on these very small figures - I used tweezers to put pieces of fabric down, tried t...
Post a Comment
Read more

A spider sandwich for lunch?

Close -up of the base of "witch with sticks' art doll   Did you know that if you were a witch, eating a spider sandwich could give you special powers? Rosemary Ellen Guiley says in her  Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft, and Wicca  that in some traditions of folk magic, a black spider “eaten between two slices of buttered bread” will imbue a witch with great power. If you’re not interested in eating spiders, some traditions say that catching a spider and carrying it in a silk pouch around your neck will help prevent illness... So, while creating my art doll witch, a spider was always there amongst the drawings and plans. rough drawing of an idea for the base of the doll    I rarely take photos during the process of making a doll, only because I get so engaged in the making I forget to take a photo at each step of the way . I am not entirely comfortable creating witches, so I took a few photos of my process....  when I remembered.... sc...
1 comment
Read more