Irises in the Wind

JeanneB53 and I have just had a very pleasant, if blustery, walk in St Ives to blip the irises I mentioned yesterday. I took masses of blips of irises but I'm going with this out of focus one because it captures the effect of the wind on the pond, the flowers and on my camera! When I looked at it on screen I instantly had two memories jump into my head. The first was one of my favourite poems (below) which I believe I have quoted before, and the second one was the blip reminds me of a wonderful weekend in Paris with pals celebrating friend Laura's retirement a couple of years ago. As part of our whistle stop tour some of us visited the Orangerie in the Tuilleries and were awed by Les Nympheas I think Monet might have some of my irises in there somewhere! Maybe take a look in large.

EXTRA: JeanneB53 took a crafty blip of me taking the iris so you can visit her page and see what a windy day it was!

Wind
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

Ted Hughes