Pink odium

It's in the Code of Curmudgeonly Conduct--Thou shalt loathe pink! I realize my pink petulance may lose us the few blog readers we have, but what can I say.  I much prefer the lavenders, blues and purples, the yellows, oranges and reds, white, even the recent trends favoring chartreuse and black in the garden. I guess you could say I prefer all colors to pink. I would not willingly welcome a pink flowering plant to my garden solely for its pinkness. Yes, we do have bergenia in our garden. But I did not plant it--and it looks just horrid next to the forsythia--not to mention the dandelions!

So how do I survive spring you ask. It's not easy being me during spring. Let me show you. Come with me on a walk around our neighborhood this afternoon and you'll see just what I have to endure. This is not going to be a bucolic stroll in the country or even the suburbs. Ours is going to be an urban adventure. You're going to see concrete and cars and electrical poles and houses that sit very close together. This is the world of the weed whackin' wenches' urban potager and flower gardens. Let's pound the pavement people!

This is the first thing I see as I head out down our street. Isn't the shape and form of the trees just beautiful, despite their pinkness?

Even among the hyacinths some pink ones sneak in.  If you close your eyes and just enjoy the fragrance, you can more easily ignore the fact that they're pink.

 

This goes on for blocks and blocks and blocks! it's enough to drive a person right out of a grouchy, ill-tempered state of being.

Here and there, a splash of white or red or a cascading wall of evergreen clematis will break up the pink monotony.

But soon enough it's back to pink...

...this tree produces huge quantities of plums.

The scent of daphne odorosa keeps us energized as we work our way up the very steep hill that is the home stretch on our walk.

Is there anything more perfect than this beautiful white magnolia bud? What? It's tinged with pink you say? A pink tinge doesn't really count as pink, does it? And this rhodie is more lavender than pink, so it doesn't count either. 

Why am I standing under this tree and sighing? Well its branches reach out and over the sidewalk and they embrace the passer-by in a world of pink cotton candy and sweet fragrance. Oh no, please, don't tell the Committee in charge of Cranky Curmudgeonly Conduct, or the 4 Cs for short!

Look! It's CHARTREUSE! How's that to shock our eyeballs out of their rose-tinted trance? This is euphorbia wulfenii. 

 

By now we've covered about 2 miles and we're back home. In front of our house the ornamental cherry  trees are taking their sweet time--sweet indeed! They can't possibly be considered pink, can they?