The featured image shows Caladenia latifolia – the Pink Fairy.
If you are in southern Australia (Tasmania included), within one hundred kilometres of the Indian or Southern Oceans, and have access to somewhere bushy and sandy, chances are excellent that you can see this species in flower, right now…or very soon.
(apology/note to subscribers – published as part of Winter, transitioning to Spring – is still apropos, alas, so its advice is still current: if you receive an overly-full “new post notification” email, I suggest that you immediately click its link to www.pelican-yoga.com and then delete the notification email)
Pink Fairies are one of Australia’s most abundant and most conspicuous orchids.
They come in various shades of pink, to white.
Both pink and white forms now abound in the Banksia section of Kings Park – where I took the photo yesterday, notionally Spring’s first day.
They are “punctuating” some also-gorgeous Banksia spikes, which have also recently emerged.
Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008) wrote one of the sunniest Spring songs – a wordless one, to which Abbey Lincoln added lyrics.
In 1987, at Yoshi’s, tenor saxophonist George Coleman delivered a superb, very “alive” version.
If you have headphones, plug them in!
Harold Mabern is pianist, Ray Drummond the bassist, with drummer Alvin Queen.
Abbey Lincoln (1930-2010) sang her version on her 1991 album You Gotta Pay the Band.
Only on this album can you hear her with saxophonist Stan Getz.
Charlie Haden played bass, Hank Jones piano, Mark Johnson drums.