Wildflowers

I really like the tendency that public parks now seem to be setting places aside as small wild flower meadows rather than just beautifully stagemanaged flower beds. This bank in Lochend Park in Edinburgh last year was covered in wild poppies and this year seems to have been taken over by thistles. What I don't know is this nature at work or have the park authorities had a hand in it. No matter though, I really like it.

And to accompany the image, a bit of poetry:

The Thistle
In a patch of baked earth
At the crumbled cliff's brink,
Where the parching of August
Has cracked a long chink,

Against the blue void
Of still sea and sky
Stands single a thistle,
Tall, tarnished, and dry.

Frayed leaves, spotted brown,
Head hoary and torn,
Was ever a weed
Upon earth so forlorn,

So solemnly gazed on
By the sun in his sheen
That prints in long shadow
Its raggedness lean?

From the sky comes no laughter,
From earth not a moan.
Erect stands the thistle,
Its seeds abroad blown.


Robert Laurence Binyon