Pink flowers – possibly some form of echinacea – tumbling over each other as if to watch something. They’re at a concert and the ornamental grass is performing on stage, perhaps, or at a football match. An exciting one.
But we know that’s just fancy. Unlike us, the flowers don’t need a reason to be like this, they simply respond at a cellular lever to the sunlight, the soil and whatever moisture they can seek out. Continue reading
All photographers learn to enjoy light. These upright elephant ears (some form of alocasia) are so beautifully backlit they would be interesting even without the patterned raindrops and veining and the anole’s shadow.
But I’m not complaining about the photobombing anole. I like the spreading toes (I’m scared of snakes, so lizard toes are always a reassurance) and it interests me how our minds interpret height from the strength of the shadow. We know the head is raised because the shadow is softer – it’s a three dimensional shadow, not a flat one.
This green anole lizard was benefiting from the vision and hard work of Jesse Yancy, a literary gentleman who has raised a garden / wildlife haven on land around the edge of a small, concrete car park that he does not own in Belhaven, Mississippi. Continue reading
Azaleas at Bodnant Gardens
My end of year post is not about which posts were the most popular in 2019 or the most fun to write or the pictures I’m most proud to have taken. It’s about the pictures I’m sick of seeing languishing in photo files waiting for the ‘right’ post. Continue reading
This bar, photographed at night during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, has style. I like the arched ceiling, the mix of patterns, the glow of lights in the darkness, the greenery that brings the outside in, and the observing mannequin. Other details emerge if you have time to explore. Continue reading
Hanging garden
This is an outtake from yesterday’s Chalky Pastel Flowers post. Not because it forgot its words or slipped on something, I hasten to add – I decided that it didn’t help my contention. It was too maroon.
Although the band and thin stripes decorating these scalloped bells would have qualified as chalky, and the flowers do pale to a lovely antique pink as they age, there’s more to this story. The ribbed buds, the debonaire green flower ‘caps’, the purple stems and tinges on the foliage, the long bell shape with its parabolic edge… if somebody told me one of these flowers had won a Nobel Prize for something and asked me to guess which one, I’d have no hesitation in pointing to the campanula. Continue reading
Flower show fun: a wicker peacock with delphiniums for tail feathers
Not a title I was expecting to write, but I had to share this snippet from one of the nurseries taking part in the RHS Chatsworth Flower Show. This peacock was (metaphorically) strutting its stuff as part of the silver-gilt winning display of elatum delphiniums by Home Farm Plants of Covington. Continue reading
Camassia cusickii is a bulb that naturalises in full sun to partial shade, throwing up sturdy spires of starry, steel blue flowers. Its folk names include Wild Hyacinth and Quamash. English bluebells are contributing their darker blue blur in the picture above. Continue reading
Withered rose hips on spiky stems overlooking the rooftops of Prague and the Vltava river.
Shared for Becky’s March Squares.
I am sometimes asked why I need more pictures. I’m not the world’s best photographer, my camera is an iPhone in my bag or pocket (so readily available) and I like to practice. Well, that’s my excuse. A true one, but it misses the point.
It’s hard to explain the feelings I have when I look at this, good picture or bad picture. It might seem weird to write them down, but we’re blogging here, aren’t we? A personal blog’s all about riffing on whatever catches our attention, wondering if there’s anyone in the world who will follow our train of thought and pinching our arms in astonishment at those who tolerantly do. So…what do I feel when I look at this picture? Continue reading
Echinops at Bluebell Cottage Gardens
It’s March and Becky from The Life Of B is hosting a new, month-long challenge. This month’s topic is spiky and the only real rule is that the main picture must be a square shape. Please join in if you’re feeling at all spiky!
