Flower-a-Day:Dogwood Blooms

Dogwood Blooms, 6x8,oil/linen

plein air painting

$100,unframed

Purchase: jan.blencowe@comcast.net

pay safely w/credit card through PAYPAL

Well I suppose the Flower-a-Day project has begun in earnest!! Today's flower of choice is the Dogwood. I painted early this morning just before the rain...not sure how many flowers will actually be left after an afternoon of wind and rain, so it's good that I got going early. The dogwood tree in our yard is a wild one, not planted, just and indigenous species. You will find dogwoods scattered throught wooded areas in Connecticut. You can read the Legend of the Dogwood here or visit A Tree Growers Diary to follow the growth and bloom of a dogwood over the course of a year. Beautiful photographs and lots of interesting information about the growth and care of dogwoods.

DOGWOOD BLOSSOMS
by: George Marion McClellan

O dreamy languors and the violet mist

Of early Spring, the deep sequestered vale

Gives first her paling-blue Miamimist,

Where blithely pours the cuckoo's annual tale

Of Summer promises and tender green,

Of a new life and beauty yet unseen.

The forest trees have yet a sighing mouth,

Where dying winds of March their branches swing,

While upward from the dreamy, sunny South,

A hand invisible leads on the Spring.

His rounds from bloom to bloom the bee begins

With flying song, and cowslip wine he sups,

Where to the warm and passing southern winds,

Azaleas gently swing their yellow cups.

Soon everywhere, with glory through and through,

The fields will spread with every brilliant hue.

But high o'er all the early floral train,

Where softness all the arching sky resumes,

The dogwood dancing to the winds' refrain,

In stainless glory spreads its snowy blooms.

"Dogwood Blossoms" is reprinted from The Book of American Negro Poetry. Ed. James Weldon Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922.

plein air
painting
art
trees
dogwood
poetry