Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
I’m sharing two pictures, taken in and around Darwen moors, Lancashire. I’ve been walking over moorland for longer than I can remember, so these places have a comfortable familiarity, even at dusk.
Both of these iPhone pictures were taken during evening walks, designed around a visit to one of the local pubs – a very British tradition. Continue reading “Sense of Place: Dusk Falls Over Moorland”
This sweet little posy of zinnias was all the nicer for being a gift from Jim Rosenblatt. His official title may be Dean Emeritus of The Mississippi College School of Law, but he wears the unofficial title of Plant Enthusiast with the same self-depreciation and benevolent good nature.
Several years ago, he created a cutting / kitchen garden in an unused corner of the faculty’s parking lot. The soil is rich and crumbly now, after years of being tended, making the plot very productive. These zinnias were freshly gathered from there.
I wonder how many other people have benefitted from gifts of peppers, tomatoes, herbs and flowers from his car park plot? Many more will have their day brightened by spotting this city centre garden as they passed. Continue reading “Happiness In A Vase: Zinnias”
Music makes me happy, and live music can be the best of all. I’m fascinated to watch musicians listen to each other on stage as they take turns to riff. It’s one of many added benefits of live music.
You’ll see all degrees of listening – in-the-mood in the main, but also respect, surprise, the odd wince, right through to definitely-thinking-about-something-else. Naming no names, of course, for civility’s sake. In most cases they’ve heard it all before, often.
I loved how these blues players listened with intensity, as if they were hearing each other play for the first time. The stage lights had simplified their colours to blues and magentas and the steel guitar had become abstract, rippling gold. Continue reading “Listening To A Riff; Capturing A Moment”
When I first started gardening, it was in a garden that was so big, it seemed to eat up plants. The broad expanses of clay soil, hospitable enough with plenty of leaf mould and grit dug in, were insatiable. Had this been a boarding house for plants, a jaunty ‘Vacancies’ sign would have been permanently on display.
I could order a whole box of bare roots, at considerable cost, but they seemed to melt away in the garden’s expanse. Three would go here, and three more there; a choice plant by the gate so you were bound to appreciate it; a few more in the main borders and underneath the canopies of trees, but the box was soon, sadly, emptied and the garden seemed virtually as open as it had been before.
Luckily I like propagating – splitting plants, growing from seed – so that was OK. But I developed the habit of not liking annuals. Annuals were a waste. Mere temporary fixes. Their gap of land would still be a gap in a year’s time – in five years or twenty – if ‘real’ plants were not put there instead. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Temporary Plants”
I’m fond of hardy geraniums (cranesbills), so was happy to see this new-to-me cultivar. Young ‘Havana Blues’ plants might appear a little on the straggly side until well established, when waving, wiry stems compete en mass to bear the most perfect, jewel-like flower. Continue reading “Regular Random: Five Minutes With Geranium ‘Havana Blues’”
Couldn’t resist sharing this picture of a potted colchicum, part of East Ruston’s extensive collection, even though I just learned that they are highly toxic plants. Even worse, their leaves can be confused with wild garlic, which tends to grow in the same areas. So, unlike many poisonous plants which have the potential to harm, but are never ingested, colchicums have been documented to kill. Continue reading “Another Colchicum Autumnale”
The challenge asks us to tempt our readers to click through by showing a peek of something. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Peek”
Susan Rushton 