Almost a Hibiscus

 
 
 
 

I think I am going to start painting vegetables and their flowers. I find them more interesting and not as common. The winding vines and the laughing healthy leaves proudly open to the sun? Did you see the closed wrapped up squash flower in her robe? No one has ever been so beautifully arrayed!

Could you imagine if Monet had focused on veggies instead of his flower gardens? You would have seen his wife and her entourage strolling with their umbrellas slightly tilted among field upon field of corn with its stalks brilliant in green and the corn whiskers pouring out in purest gold. We might have seen her gazing lovingly at that beautiful squash flower. Not likely.

You know why? You have to be an awfully early riser to have the pleasure, at least with the squash. I took these pictures easily at seven thirty this morning and it is about nine more or less now and they are midway in closing. Plus, these flowers do not last much more than a day. Sadly, they drop their flower much too fast. Their glory, they do not share with the multitudes. In fact they are more patrician these humble plants than we suppose.

Now one thing has alarmed me, my squash are not coming. This is not supposed to be an ornamental plant. It should bear fruit, but the bees are not coming. I had read an article, "Remembering Song birds, bees and butterflies" recently that bee populations were being decimated by colony collapse. What is happening here? I thought maybe if I went out there and gently stroked the stigma on the pistil with a small paintbrush that that might do the trick. We will have to wait and see if that can substitute the gentle, intricate, and mysterious work of a honeybee. Time will only tell.