Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and the supernatural with a romantic soul. But if I'd chosen to follow in my parents' footsteps, things might have been quite different. My dad was an electrical engineer, which means I'm pretty nifty with changing plugs and rewiring light sockets. My mum was a florist, and gardening was her passion, though I've more black fingers of death than green ones. Even now the sight of forget-me-nots or irises, or the scent of pinks and big, old-fashioned roses take me back to long, hot summers playing in our huge back garden. We had a 15 foot twisted willow that I would regularly climb until I grew heavy enough to bough the upper branches. I'd make my own perfume from rose petals gathered in the garden, and eat strawberries green from the strawberry patch because I couldn't wait for them to turn red. Flowers still bring back a lot of good memories.
And they have taken on varying significance in my stories as a result. In my Redemption series, a bright blue flower not unlike the Morning Glory and called azuri is symbolic to my hero because it becomes a favourite of the heroine, both for its color and fragrance (I'm a huge fan of flowery smells, especially jasmine, honeysuckle, and lavender). In a future book, my hero has a dangerous encounter with a carnivorous flower - a Blood Glory - inspired by this pretty from a visit to a butterfly house.
And my favourite flower, probably fitting to a scifi romance author, is the Stargazer lily. For my birthday this year, I bought myself a few large, heavily scented tree lilies. I still stuck with the scifi theme though, by including varieties called Starburst and Shooting Star.
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| Starburst |
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| Shooting Star |
Don't they look like big, bright stars or exploding fireworks? I'm not one for big, gaudy things in general, but I do love these. And at least out in the garden, I'm less likely to manage to kill them off. :P
Want to chat about flowers or anything else? My favourite place to hang out is Twitter as
@pippajaygreen, or you can connect with me at my
website or
blog.
5 comments:
Hi Pippa, I think lilies are so beautiful but...the day lilies I planted when I moved in to my house 40 years ago took over. I hate killing anything so I just dealt with it until a couple of years ago when I bit the proverbial bullet and had whole sections dug out and passed on to other people and, when I ran out of people who wanted them, they went to yard debris and have become compost for someone's garden. Used to love heavily scented flowers but now I avoid them because of pesky respiratory problems.
Love the picture of the morning glory! I'm studying sacred geometry for the book I'm currently writing and I can see the sacred in that picture as well as the ones of the lilies. Thanks for sharing them!!!
PS: See you on Twitter! @JudithAshley19
I love the flowers with romantic names, like Stargazer Lilies.
I have a gardening question: How do you keep your chickens from digging up your garden?
I'm on Twitter as (@SarahRaplee.)
Oh my goodness that Starburst doesn't look real!!!! Thanks for the beautiful pictures.
Sarah and Judith - already following you both on Twitter! ^_^
Judith, I managed to kill off the tree lilies I had before, so we shall see if this batch survives long enough to become a pest. >_<
Sarah, tbh we don't really stop them from destroying parts of the garden. They took out our entire beetroot crop this year, and had a go at our tomato plants, which surprised me. But we let our garden grow quite wild, and keep important or delicate plants in raised beds (although one of them *will* actually flutter up to reach those). The chooks prefer the lower part of our garden which is mostly woodland plants, small trees and leaf litter, where they can find lots of bugs. So, in general, they don't cause any serious damage. Also they're bantams, the half size chooks, so I guess they can only manage half the damage, lol.
Hi Shannon! I know, that one was a huge, huge flower! Thanks!
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