We’re now in the Month of May and the new Spring leaves are looking fresh and wonderful. It’s a wonderful time of year full of excitement at what will pop up after the Winter and I’ve taken lots of photos of lovely bright Spring flowers but this posting is dedicated to the Greens………..
Beautiful Horse Chestnut leaves with the sun’s rays illuminating them.
Verdure: ‘lush green vegetation’ (OED)
The semi-translucent Euphorbia Humpty Dumpty basking in the sunshine. These plants remind me of flying saucers or as if they have come from Mars……… (vivid imagination).
A lovely Hawthorn leaf – the flowers of which are so delicate and pretty. I think the leaf shape is rather gorgeous too; it catches the afternoon sun perfectly.
The Gunnera with its new leaf growth and flowers. It always looks so commanding and impressive next to water.
Lush: ‘(of vegetation) luxuriant – very rich and providing great sensory pleasure’ (OED)
Some irridescent moss which was growing through the silver-grey gravel.
The new, soft lime-green growth of a Spruce tree in the garden. I love the colour, texture and form.
I thought it was fun how the cows seemed to line up – it didn’t seem very characteristic of their behaviour! Here they are munching away in this verdant scene.
Verdant: ‘green with grass or other lush vegetation‘ (OED)
Elder with flower buds waiting to open. I like the lime-green colour of the buds against the darker leaves.
I love the bright, fresh green of this Perennial Cornflower’s leaves. They are quite hairy. The flowers are all out now, but this is how the leaves looked in mid-April. There’s a ladybird protecting the bud from aphids.
Luxuriant: ‘(of vegetation) rich and profuse in growth’ (OED)
Brunnera Jack Frost with its very pretty heart-shaped, veined leaves. The silvery colour helps the plant to withstand hot, dry areas in the garden as they help to reflect the light.



“Nor less attractive is the woodland scene,
Diversified with trees of every growth,
Alike, yet various. Here the grey smooth trunks
Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine,
Within the twilight of their distant shades;
There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood
Seems sunk, and shorten’d to its topmost boughs.
No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,
And of a wannish grey; the willow such,
And poplar, that with silver lines his leaf,
And ash far stretching his umbrageous arm;
Of deeper green the elm; and deeper still,
Lord of the woods, the long surviving oak.
Some glossy-leaved, and shining in the sun,
The maple, and the beech of oily nuts
Prolific, and the lime at dewy eve
Diffusing odours; nor unnoted pass
The sycamore, capricious in attire,
Now green, now tawny, and , ere autumn yet
Have changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright”.
William Cowper ~ The Task
(available online at: http://www.ccel.org/c/cowper/works/task.htm, accessed April 2011)
Dictionary Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary (revised 2008,2009) Oxford University Press.