Grape soda lupines (lupinus excubitus). These grow wild on the roadsides here, intermingled with the wild mustard (Father Serra was also here). Just gorgeous. They’re supposed to smell like their name, but we couldn’t catch the faintest whiff of grape.
Lupines are my favorite flower. I understand they were imported from Europe. In Maine where my relatives live they have naturalized in fields and along roadsides. They aren’t growing wild like that in Connecticut though, just in my cultivated garden when I’ve grown them in the past.
Oh lovely! We love Miss Rumphius (we even listened to it in Spanish once, just for the beauty of the story, even though no on in our family really understands Spanish). What a gorgeous photograph. No lupines growing in my urban almost-Pittsburgh neighborhood, so I will take a deep vicarious breath and feast my eyes on pictures like this. Thank you for posting!
thanks so much for this info. we have some of these growing in our yard and across the street and had not been able to find out what they were called.
and i did see some-mixed with mustard and poppies growing off the 15 fwy by corona the other day, which in the just-before-evening-hours looked positively gorgeous!
Lovely! We love the lupine lady too. I almost got into a car accident on the 5 this morning as I was gazing at the mustard flower on the hillside. It’s not the first time, either. I looked at other drivers (who weren’t gazing) and wondered how they could possibly stay in their lanes when driving by those gorgeous fields!
I love lupines – they grow all along the beach here. i know they’re a nuisance to our friends who are sheep ranchers, because they’re poisonous to the sheep, but they sure are lovely.
Oh, I adored the Mrs Rumphius book. Read it to all my kids – and then they’d read it to themselves. I may go drag it out ofthe bookshelf and make them all listen to it again tonight. LOL! I’m sure as teenagers they’d love to. . .
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
They look so much like bluebonnets, also a lupine. How lovely!
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 7:18 amLupines are my favorite flower. I understand they were imported from Europe. In Maine where my relatives live they have naturalized in fields and along roadsides. They aren’t growing wild like that in Connecticut though, just in my cultivated garden when I’ve grown them in the past.
Love, love, love them.
Love the story Miss Rumphius too.
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 7:41 amOh lovely! We love Miss Rumphius (we even listened to it in Spanish once, just for the beauty of the story, even though no on in our family really understands Spanish). What a gorgeous photograph. No lupines growing in my urban almost-Pittsburgh neighborhood, so I will take a deep vicarious breath and feast my eyes on pictures like this. Thank you for posting!
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 10:40 amthanks so much for this info. we have some of these growing in our yard and across the street and had not been able to find out what they were called.
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 1:45 pmand i did see some-mixed with mustard and poppies growing off the 15 fwy by corona the other day, which in the just-before-evening-hours looked positively gorgeous!
Ooh, a call to arms to get busy with the 100 Species Challenge. I love it, and the photo, Melissa!
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 3:24 pmLovely! We love the lupine lady too. I almost got into a car accident on the 5 this morning as I was gazing at the mustard flower on the hillside. It’s not the first time, either.
I looked at other drivers (who weren’t gazing) and wondered how they could possibly stay in their lanes when driving by those gorgeous fields!
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 7:09 pmAh, so sweet… I hope your day is a lovely as these lupines…
Posted on March 25th, 2009 at 3:30 amLovely!
And it’s time to read Miss Rumphius again ….
Posted on March 25th, 2009 at 4:44 amI love lupines – they grow all along the beach here. i know they’re a nuisance to our friends who are sheep ranchers, because they’re poisonous to the sheep, but they sure are lovely.
Posted on March 26th, 2009 at 11:41 amOh, I adored the Mrs Rumphius book. Read it to all my kids – and then they’d read it to themselves.
I may go drag it out ofthe bookshelf and make them all listen to it again tonight. LOL! I’m sure as teenagers they’d love to. . . 
Posted on March 31st, 2009 at 8:29 am