Où est août ? Août est là. C'est le mois d'août... le mois doux. Les aoûtiens sont partis, et les juilletistes sont rentrés... Excuse me. I got carried away. August is here. If you can pronounce all that, your French is pretty good.
So are these purple flowers. Pretty, I mean, and in good shape. We never picked our artichokes, and they have all turned into fuzzy purple flowers (above) at this point.
This flower is a geranium. It's a perennial geranium called the "rozanne" — we have two big pots of them on the front deck.
And finally, here are the hydrangeas that Walt grew from cuttings off a big plant on the north side of our house and planted out front, under the deck. This year they are purple.
Artichoke flowers are as delicious looking as they taste.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if all varieties of the artichoke plant produce edible "flowers" or just some. We didn't try to eat these this year.
DeleteI didn't know you could eat any of them.
DeleteI don't mean eating the flowers after the actually bloom, but the immature flower heads -- hearts, bottoms, leaves.
DeleteBeautiful flowers. It's so hot and dry down here that my hydrangeas/hortensias are more brown than pink.
ReplyDeleteWe've had just a few really hot days. Right now the weather is very pleasant -- cool mornings, warm afternoons.
DeleteI was taught to pronounce "août" like a Scotsman ordering someone to leave (gorgeous flowers, btw).
ReplyDeleteAutolycus,
DeleteEven though the right pronunciation of août rhymes with "too", I guess at one point some people pronounced it as in Yahoo. There is a popular song Au trente-et-un du mois d'août where the pronunciation is closer to the Scottish one, but I have no idea what said pronunciation is really like !
Autolycus ! lol ... that was vaguely the way I said it ... If I lived in France, they would beg me to speak English.
ReplyDeleteKen, the color and size of the flowers is amazing. Right now, all I see from every window is green but I will take that over all that brown or white that I saw too much of, up North :)
Walt has a seriously green thumb !
Get aout of here lol! I love hortensia, especially the ones I've seen in France.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful hydrangeas... you guys always have success with what you grow!
ReplyDeleteRegarding the artichokes... so, you didn't harvest any? Just let them go to flower?
And, about août... didn't you mention in a blog post once, that some folks pronounce the t, and others don't? Kind of like the American English pronunciations of often... one pronounces the t, and the other doesn't?
We've heard dozens of people say the word août on the news on France 2 TV (the official government channel) today and nearly all of them say "oot" (sort of like the Scottish/Virginian/Canadian pronunciation of "out"). My 1980-vintage pronunciation dictionary says that in the expression le mois d'août the final T is not pronounced [luh-mwah-doo] but in en août it is pronounced [ä-noot]. As Judy says, it's a little like off-un vs. off-tun in American English. I remember hearing people pronounce the word as [ah-oo] or [ah-oot], in two syllables, back in the 1970s.
ReplyDeleteIn my 1960s French class we were taught ah-oo. And stationner versus parking.
Delete