So Many Challenges, So Little Time!
…and that’s excluding real world challenges, as this post is about blogging ones. These pictures were inspired by Nancy Merrill’s challenge: Textures.
Nancy is one of several community-spirited WordPress bloggers who fill the breach left by the late (still lamented) Daily Post Photo Challenge. I met many blogging buddies through the Daily Post and loved seeing their sometimes wildly individual takes on each subject. The official WordPress format made it a cinch to navigate. When the challenge ended I felt dispirited, not foreseeing that the mantle would pass to so many other hosts.
Cee Neuner maintains a useful list of WordPress challenges in the For The Love Of Challenges section of her blog. My hat’s off to Cee – her list is more inclusive and up to date than the Daily Post’s list ever was. She lists photography and writing challenges and I’ve just noticed a couple of musical ones are listed too, although I know from experience not to inflict my musical taste on anyone not similarly afflicted. 🙂
Shell house grotto at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden
The grotto celebrates The Queen Mother and features her initials
Wordless Wednesday: Bee
Wildflower Meadow at Trentham Gardens
Coreopsis flowers paint Trentham Garden’s wildflower meadow yellow even as the night draws in. There’s no such thing as a dull day with these around!
Shared for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Hollyhocks At Arley Hall
The Tudor-style Tea Cottage at Arley Hall in Cheshire is a focal point leading the eye down a broad path. On either side of the path are cottage garden style flowers, such as these flailing hollyhocks, which grow alongside a collection of summer flowering shrub roses and extend the season of interest. The Tea Cottage has been superseded by The Gardener’s Kitchen, but is used for exhibitions, filming and weddings.
For more posts that include pictures from Arley Hall, click here.
Aid to Meditation: Tree Fern Fronds
Celebrating The Southport Flower Show’s 90th Birthday
Remember the days when the Town Hall was the place to go if you wanted ‘further particulars’ about an event? How life has changed since then! At this year’s Southport Flower Show, we had no horse leaping events, but we did have heritage animals, courtesy of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, including a pig that was more rare than a giant panda (and much the same size).
The cultivars may have changed over the last 90 years, but gladioli like those shown on the 1929 poster were on display in 2019, together with just about every August flowering plant you could hope for.
Amongst so many choice plants, this solitary, perfect, innocent-looking, pink Japanese anemone caught my eye. Continue reading “Celebrating The Southport Flower Show’s 90th Birthday”
Susan Rushton 