Softly Pink, Magnolia © 2011 Bo Mackison
The magnolias are past their prime, many of the flowers have wilted and fallen to the ground. Here is one of the late bloomers still on the tree. Photographed at the Olbrich Botanical Garden in Madison Wisconsin.
Just proves you don’t have to bloom first to be fantastic!
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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is posting sunny photos on a cloudy day, and adding virtual sunshine to her afternoon.
Magnolia in Layers © 2011 Bo Mackison
Sometimes goals almost within reach, as near as an outstretched hand. Sometimes goals are lofty, and seemingly as unreachable as the stars twinkling throughout the Universe.
Sometimes goals are in vivid colors — bright and eye-catching, appealing. Sometimes goals are in gray-scale — black, white, and every tone in between. They don’t call out for attention, but all the details are there if you look closely.
Goals may be easily attainable or require a lifetime of planning, but I’m learning this. When I take a big goal and break it into small, doable steps, it is achievable — as long as I am willing to show up and do the work.
I’m evaluating her 2011 goals for the first half of the year and considering new goals for the last half of 2011.
“Powder Puff” Magnolia © 2011 Bo Mackison
Ask yourself, “Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning?” Remember, every coincidence is potentially meaningful. How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. ~ Ansel Adams
On my visit to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison early this week, it was a pleasure to see so many of the trees and plants in bloom. I let my imagination soar a bit while I was sitting on a bright blue bench, taking in the blooming beauty of a nearby magnolia tree. (If you follow my blog, you may recall I try to take at least 10 minutes out of each shooting hour to sit and capture the atmosphere in my body and mind, not only with my lens.)
I think it is making me a more aware photographer, perhaps it will eventually make me a better photographer. But today, this quiet time interludes give me many gifts not associated with photography at all.
Perhaps it is a plot, I thought as I sat quietly — a benevolent plot arranged by nature to cheer the many humans who are running around on this planet feeling over-worked, overwhelmed, unfulfilled. Those who are thinking, hopelessly, “I will never reach my goals, I will never find true happiness.”
Perhaps for the last month–this record-breaking cloudy, cool April–nature held back her beauty, anticipating a great unveiling. For it does seem that many of the flowers–whole gardens of flowers–popped open, bloomed, spilled their bright colors, all timed perfectly.
One week it was cloudy, rainy, icy. And then–poof–it was spring.
As I sat on the bright blue bench (of which I have grown very fond–everyone should have a bright blue bench to sit upon) I watched two cardinals darting about the magnolia. I don’t recall ever seeing cardinals interacting in such a way before, but they were swooping into the dense flowers and swooping out again, circling the trees, up and down–like a game of follow the leader or a spontaneous dance. When they stopped to rest on a branch, they began a back and forth chirping contest, louder and louder, calls were startlingly clear, cheerful. I laughed to hear them, it was so spontaneously beautiful.
It was as if the two cardinals were calling to everyone in the gardens–and there were many of us walking the garden paths. And they were saying,
“Here. Look. Here is this gift for you. Take this experience and hold on to it. Enjoy it now. Enjoy the sun casting colorful shadows on the pink magnolia blossoms. Enjoy the orange tulips nodding into the ir yellow neighbors. Enjoy the fresh air and the cheerful callings of the birds. Be open to the joy of these myriad gifts, take that joy home, and tuck it in your heart. Keep it safe. Then, when the clouds and storms return, pull out this memory, this sunny day feeling of the garden filled with glad tidings of spring, and be thankful.”
Pink Magnolia © 2011 Bo Mackison
I finally found a sunny time to drive across town and see how the flowers were faring at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. I had a nice surprise. Even though many of the flowers are several weeks behind their normal blooming time, the entire garden in filled with flowering beauties. The magnolia trees are in bloom. I think the magnolia has one of the more interesting flowers.
Scientists think that the magnolia is one of the older flowers on earth, believed to have evolved before bees, for the magnolia is designed for pollination by beetles. (The magnolia is not the oldest of flowers, that distinction goes to the water-lily.) The magnolia bloom has many primitive features including a large number of both pistils and stamens–the reproductive parts of the flower. In comparison, most flowers have only one pistil and five stamens. The magnolias’ large number occur in spiraled rows and cluster together above the petals.
The magnolia has between six and twelve petals plus an additional three sepals. Typical of primitive flowers, the petals and sepals are nearly identical in shape and color. This magnolia, the Loebner magnolia, has a purplish hue. Other magnolias range in colors from pure white to yellowish-green to pink to lavender.
The trees, when planted in groupings, are quite a marvelous sight–twenty five foot tall trees covered with thousands of almost translucently tinted flowers.
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I am back home after spending the first part of 2011 in Arizona. It has taken some time to adjust to life in Wisconsin, but now that the spring flowers blooming and the sun is finally shining, life is good.
Magnolia Sky © 2010 Bo Mackison
Sometimes the best view is up!
Especially at Longenecker Gardens at the University of Wisconsin’s Longenecker Gardens in Madison. There are over 300 varieties of crabapples, magnolias, and lilacs in the arboretum.
