Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Nancy Merrill’s latest photo challenge is ‘Whimsical‘. My contribution is this shot of a display of red, retro, plastic kitchenware in the City Museum of St. Louis. Why the words in the speech bubble tickle my sense of whimsy / humour / irony, I’m struggling to explain. My friends would no doubt say it’s because I have a dodgy sense of humour: I can laugh quite a lot at things that apparently aren’t funny, including my own jokes. Continue reading “It’s Manly!”
Sorbus eburnea is a multi-stemmed Rowan that dangles clusters of white fruits or berries on pinkish stems in late summer and autumn. Green foliage turns shades of yellow, orange or purple red before falling. It’s an attractive, slow growing shrub or small tree.
While visiting the flower shows this year, I was drawn to a colour thread represented by the flowers I’m showing here. I’d filed the pictures as Clarets thinking ‘Anyone for claret?’ would be a good post title, but reluctantly concluded that claret was stretching things too far…
though not quite so far as the liberties taken in naming this ‘New Vintage Violet’…
or this ‘Dark Angel Violet’. Plant names are a minefield at the best of times, even before you add colour into the mix. Continue reading “Name The Colour Of These Flowers”
Cee’s asking us to share things people grow for her Fun Foto Challenge. Toenails might have been fun, in a chasing someone with a worm kind of way, but neither chasing with worms nor toenail pictures have ever really been my thing. Continue reading “Apples, Worms, Toenails and Caterpillars”
This is my last week to share square pictures of pink roses and, to celebrate, this week’s roses come with extras for those who were part of the challenge, or kindly indulged my weakness, even though they are not quite as keen on roses. First, a pink rose named for a lovely lady. It ticks the strongly fragrant box and though I don’t know this variety quite as well as some of the others, with further acquaintance, I suspect it would be one of my favourites. Though I can’t claim this is a bud, it is only partly open and will eventually become a rosette.
This celebration of a flower is for Becky, for hosting the challenge so gracefully, and for all those who took part, many of them sharing a square cropped picture with varying amounts of pink in it for the whole month. Well done! I’ve loved seeing them all appear in The Reader.
For orchid lovers, here’s a collection of them, In The Pink, and artfully arranged with moss, slate and logs. Continue reading “Square In September: Last Hurrah”
I didn’t really want to go to a garden, but I forced myself. Hours sitting in a traffic jam (more accurately, a series of traffic jams) had taken their toll and, although Trentham Gardens was not far out of my way, I wasn’t feeling it.
As I was wavering, I remembered once calling a friend, MVM, to get out of going to see some gardens as I was not feeling well. He said “You’ll be sorry! You’ll like it! There’ll be flowers!”. I went, and it was that day I got to know my sweetheart. The influence of the two of them, spreading as it does over time and space, was powerful enough for me steer my car away from the default path, up the M6, to invest in all the things we invest in when we visit a garden. Continue reading “Six on Saturday: Trentham Gardens in Late September”
Susan Rushton 