My Poetry Group and Poetry Book by Anne Douglas, printed in winter, 2014

The day when I had a series of my little poems published and printed in a small book form at the end of the year 2014 was a bit of excitement!  My book is called Poetry Book by Anne Douglas and contains a collection or an anthology of about a dozen or so of my pieces of work, from The Fox, to Entertaining Granny to Tea, to All in A Day's Work.  I included a couple of Japanese Haiku which, defined as "a major form of Japanese verse, written in 17 syllables divided into three lines of five, seven and five syllables containing several allusions to nature and to the weather", I really did enjoy writing.  My next task which I am setting myself is to sketch botanical art drawings to complement corresponding Haiku, or Haikus.

The Garden at the rear of number 13

I look forward to the spring time when I can continue to watch the growth of my lovely, blue and purple passion flower or passiflora in Latin, grow over and around my obelisk in my little garden to the rear of number 13 Acton Park Way.  My passion vines when in bloom do look spectacular with their spindly interiors and beautiful colours and accordingly here is some more information about the passion flower:  it can be used for insomnia and nervousness, as an analgesic and for hypertension.  Its full latin name is passiflora incarnate, and this passiflora genus of plants is in the type of the order of passifloreae which includes about nineteen genera and two hundred and fifty species.  Not all passiflora vines bear edible fruit.  It is a very beautiful climbing plant from the Americas.

My gardenia jasmine which I planted last May is not doing quite so well.  I have tried feeding it with Tomorite growth feed but its height and general size remain stunted.  I was hoping for a beautiful, white flowering plant with a generous fragrance of jasmine and gardenia.  It lived for a few weeks in our greenhouse, however, now that the frost has abated, it is back in the garden in a terracotta flower post, surrounded by to spring bulbs which are just peeping through into the world.

Last year my camellia flowered as it did, with a lovely white flower, the previous year which was when it was planted.  The flower is non-fragranced, but, oh, is it a gorgeous bloom, with its many, thick, oval petals, forming the bud and of course, for the not so discerning, tea may be made by crumbling  the small, young leaves of the camellia japonica, when there are no tea leaves in stock in the tea caddy!