May 6th, 2014

Author: donich_admin

What flowers…

I’ve never seen anything like the rhododendrons (I’m glad IE knew how to spell that because I didn’t) in Lochgoilhead. There is everything from enormous tree sized ones in the Arboretum to tiny delicate ones no bigger than a house plant. The colours of them are stupendous, from purple to pink to cerise to cream to yellow to white – and the flowers so totally cover the plant on some of them that you can’t see even a scrap of greenery.

I took some photos of a couple of my favourites when we were out walking today. I think the enormous pale pink one is my favourite of all – it looks like an OTT 1980s wedding dress (think Princess Diana). But there is a dark pink one I have a lot of time for as well – I tried to capture a bumble bee on it in the picture – but great camera as it is – the Lumia 1020 takes such huge images that the shutter speed is quite slow and I just missed it.

Of course the rhododendrons are not native to Scotland and some people believe they should be rooted out. In my belief they are so obviously happy, flourishing and beautiful here that it would be a shame to do this (even if you could which you couldn’t). I’m not entirely logical in my mind about this though – because I am afraid I can’t extend my tolerance for non-natives to the grey squirrel (even though I used to feed them in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens in my lunch hours).

The bluebells are also starting to pop out everywhere – as is the wild garlic.