Flowers of Carmel-by-the-Sea | 'Home thoughts from Abroad'

Flowers of Carmel-by-the-Sea | ‘Home thoughts from Abroad’

I love flowers, most girls do!! I love growing them, something I need to perfect, picking them, something I am adept at, buying them, for others and myself, being given them and arranging them! Also, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing flowers growing naturally, splashing their colour and vibrancy like confetti across a carpet. At this time of year, in late spring/early summer, there is a seemingly endless abundance of blooms everywhere. Bright yellows, fuchsia pinks, cornflowers blues and varying shades of lilac woven in between varying tones of leaf green, splattered across the coastal banks and cliff tops and clinging to paths and hedgerows. Immaculate, lovingly tended front garden displays and planted arrangements brighten the entries to peoples’ homes, to shops, restaurants and hotels. The gentle, damp Carmel-by-the Sea coastal climate, not dissimilar to England’s, is a flowers best friend, everything here flourishes as if each day they can proudly and splendidly display their ‘Sunday best’………
On the sand dunes

intermingled between coastal rocks,

blanketing the cliff sides,

and peeping between the Cypress trees.

Providing ground cover in a carefully groomed front garden.

Splashing a bold, vibrant brightness outside a shop,

and subtly displaying their own unique beauty.

Offering ‘English garden’ bouquets from a carefully tended profusion of colour

creating a delicate soft charm of soft, pale pink petals outside a Carmel-by-the-Sea, fairy tale home.

As I stand gazing, I am reminded of home, of an English garden, of my grandfathers’, my mothers’ and my siblings beautiful gardens and the immortal words of Robert Browning’s Poem, “Home thoughts from Abroad”
Oh, to be in England,
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England – now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows –
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent spray’s edge –
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower,
– Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!