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Weekly Photo Challenge: A Phoenix From The Ashes

Gnome waiting to be rehomed

This week’s photo challenge is Repurpose. It’s difficult to know where to start with that one. My sweetheart has trashed out his house and garden – I could say ‘enhanced’, if wearing my marketing hat – in countless ways, egged on by architect friend Rick Griffin and Jim Kapernick. Jim is proprietor of Old House Depot, a 20,000 sq ft cornucopia of architectural salvage in Jackson, MS.

Together, they are the most purposeful repurposers you could imagine.

Broken concrete? That would be perfect for a path. Old wood? Old wood has more uses than I care to list. Tyres? My sweetheart’s garden boasts colourful tyre planters, tyre chairs, and even some tyre-planter-spare-bits arranged to form wall decor and a small tree. Well, you have to do something with the spare bits.  Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: A Phoenix From The Ashes”

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Agave americana: monster plants

Agave americana in bloom

Yesterday’s post was a macro shot of a tiny bee on an allium: today I’m stepping back to get something much bigger in the frame.

If you love gardening, I hope you can find time to check out The Frustrated Gardener’s blog – he’s one of my firm favourites. Today he shared a post ‘Agave Aggravation’ with must-see pictures showing how an English glasshouse has been adapted to allow an Agave americana to flower.

It’s a giant, monocarpic plant: after several years it diverts all its energy into producing a spectacular flowering scape which is fertilized by humming birds. Afterwards it dies, leaving only its children to mark where it once thrived. The plant takes no chances, multiplying from small offsets that form around the base and from thousands of cross-pollinated seeds that bounce down from the sky.  Continue reading “Agave americana: monster plants”

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Artichokes and allotments

This weekend we were lured to a Yellow Book charity open day in a thriving community garden, Mossfield Allotments in Urmston, by promises of fruit, veggies and flowers, gardeners we could chat to, a brass band & all the cake we could eat for 50p per slice. Now, that’s a North West day out! You might call it entrapment for people of our ilk.

Artichoke crop

I loved this artichoke plant I saw in one of the allotment gardens, but I’ve had to crop it quite tightly as my iPhone’s narrow depth of field makes the background very distracting. The blue and turquoise supports at the top make a frame of sorts, though I’d magically whisk them away if I had the editing skills.  Continue reading “Artichokes and allotments”