Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
I often post about cottage garden plants, more rarely about the homes themselves. These beautiful thatched cottages (neighbours of Hidcote Manor Gardens) show the love owners of traditional homes often have for climbing and rambling roses. Continue reading “Traditional homes and cottage garden plants”
I took these pictures of fenced gardens earlier this year on a brief visit to the historic district of Colonial Williamsburg. I don’t see many white picket fences at home in Lancashire: dry stone walls are more our thing.
These fences seemed as much symbolic as functional: a way of staking a claim to an area; an imposing of some kind of order. The gates were unlocked so visitors could wander freely from one garden to another. In some places, they were low enough to step over. Continue reading “Symbol: white picket fence”
It’s been a real treat for us to spend time with friends visiting some of our favourite English gardens, including Hidcote Manor, Kiftsgate Court, Rousham House, Powis Castle and Wollerton Old Hall. I’ll be sorting through pictures for a few more days yet, but wanted to share a glimpse of some classic cottage garden plants that seemed to be enjoying the sunshine: roses, delphiniums, clematis, verbascums and foxgloves.
I’m not a voracious reader of poetry, but my favourite love poems and lyrics are part of my life, drawing me back to revisit them at the slightest prompt. This spring, I witnessed the culmination of the weird lifecycle of cicadas in Jackson, Mississippi. These creatures spend 13 years underground as nymphs before emerging together for a brief period of sunlight, flight, singing and mating to continue the cycle.
As we drove around the neighbourhood with the windows down, lured like the lady cicadas to listen to the loud chorus centres of males in local groves of trees, lines from one of my favourite poems – Tithonus by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – drifted back into my mind. Continue reading “Tithonus: nature and poetry”
I often write about roses, but peonies are my first and abiding floral love. I’ve already explained how this year I hopped around from foot to foot (metaphorically of course) waiting for the season to arrive. My idea was to have fun learning how to prepare them for photography, then taking pictures in a nice setting. We live and learn: today, I’m sharing my six biggest mistakes when I hoped to have been sharing pictures overflowing with peonies. Continue reading “Photographing peonies: how it all went ‘orribly wrong”
Working with roses spurred me on to learn how to take better pictures & they still exert a fascination over me. I’m confident they will always be my muse, in the strictest sense. Continue reading “English roses: my photographic muse”
Susan Rushton 