This post has been 'in development' for a long time. Bed 'B' is the bed in question. It's devoted primarily to bulbs, but with four lavender 'trees:' English and French (both bluish of hue) and two Spanish (pink and pinker) marching down the middle with a Spanish white lavender spreading at their feet.
I'm pleasantly preoccupied by the question of when lavender is a color and when it's a plant. See, for example, the color lavender (June 2012) and lavender paradox (April 2013). The story of how our lavenders started becoming trees is recounted in aftermath (March 2011).
So, after talking about bed 'C' bedfellows of contrasting colors (orange and yellow, cerise and white) in bedfellows, part 1, I wanted to talk here about bedfellows that are known for their fragrance and may be called by the same color name (lavender, of course), but are of different species: lavender and elephant garlic.
One of my expressed goals for 2013 has been to take more photographs, and indeed I have been gracing this blog with pictures since March. The first of these were taken with my phone (not a 'smart' phone, BTW), and then I dusted off last year's Vivitar Vivicam 46 to photograph daffodils. Alas, that camera needed new batteries for every 'shoot,' and so I replaced it with a Nikon Coolpix S01 which can be recharged from dependable household current. This new tool more than does justice to our gardenias and calandrinias, even capturing a bee in motion on a flower bobbing in the breeze.
Wanting the lavender and garlic to look their best in their photographs, I decided to prune the lavender trees. This process took over a week, done in short sessions during a major heat wave. By this time the garlic blossoms were bending low on dried-up stems, while the existing lavender blossoms stood higher, due to drastic removal of their lower branches. Posing the flowers did not help. I cut three garlic blossoms and balanced them in the lighter pink Spanish lavender, but could find no angle that showed both bedfellows to advantage.
Is a picture worth a thousand words? Or even the 360 I've expended so far on this subject? Maybe we'll find out next year.
Meanwhile, my mind's eye and nose enjoy juxtaposing two herbs of contrasting odors, being visited by omnivorous bees.
