Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Most of my ‘art’ shots are happy accidents. I give myself some credit for spotting an interesting subject, and playing with light, but can’t claim to have a clue how the picture will turn out. Here light seems to have been trapped by the hairy geranium stems and, by a stroke of luck, tinted pink. A smattering of blue blur circles in the top left of the picture hint at a blue sky, although they might be flowers. Continue reading “Backlit Stems With Seeds”
We’re not supposed to ascribe human characteristics to anything else, but I can’t help it. Somebody planted white foxtail lilies (eremurus) with alliums to provide height in a white flower border. The alliums are growing as the designer intended – upwards, but the foxtail lilies are demonstrating how they got their name. I’m fully aware that the light is drawing them in that direction, but that doesn’t stop my mind from doing its thing. The alliums are clustering in groups to gawp at and gossip about the wayward foxtail lilies. Continue reading “Anthropomorphising Flowers”
First, my apologies to anyone who can read the graffiti if there is anything rude on it. I am hoping there is not. If you know better, please let me know!
We happened upon the site as it was being demolished. The interest in the picture for me is the perspective of the man on the wall who seems to be contemplating his fate. Continue reading “Street Art On A Building Site”
A border is a cultivated area of land set aside for growing decorative plants. Mixed borders combine different types of plants in one place: trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, grasses, bulbs and climbers on obelisks or against a wall. Anything you like to grow can be included – if you want to accessorise it with a birdhouse or seat or some form of artwork, so much the better!
Because there isn’t a fixed recipe, mixed borders are versatile and popular. You may well be one of millions of gardeners worldwide who are tending one. Continue reading “What is a Mixed Border?”
If you were asked where is your favourite tree, and what kind of tree is it, what would you answer? This hospitable crape myrtle, growing in the garden of a purple house on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, is one of my favourites. I am several thousand miles away, so can only think back fondly to the last time my sweetheart and I saw it. Continue reading “Epiphytes In A Crape Myrtle, French Quarter, New Orleans”
While I didn’t get the effect I was hoping for, fate has granted this picture a floral, textural, whirly, fantasy feel that has something going for it. I don’t know if the perspective makes it dreamy or nightmarish, but I do like the way the colours work together and the sweeping of the grasses. Continue reading “Two Crops Of Alliums (Not That Kind Of Crop)”
Most pictures you’ll find online of the Church Of Our Lady Before Týn in Old Town Square, Prague, show its impressive facade straight on, often as if the camera was disembodied, floating above the square. This is a more intimate, human perspective looking up at one of the towers from the ground behind. Bare winter branches accentuate the Gothic style of the tower. Continue reading “Church Of Our Lady Before Týn, Prague”
