Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Over the last few months I’ve been paying attention to lichens. The trouble is, the more closely you look, the more questions arise.
After a while the boundary between stone and lichen seems to blur. Are some of these decorative patterns the stone itself, or are they all lichens? Continue reading “Lichens on Stone Walls in Darwen, Lancashire”
There’s something about roses with many petals. For many, these romantic, soulful plants are the archetypal roses, especially if they happen to be pink and to have a good fragrance.
Some of these do and some don’t. What interests me about them is their flower forms, the patterns the petals take, and the way the blooms cluster together. The odd one you may recognise. Continue reading “Old-fashioned Pink Roses With Lots of Petals”
A free-to-visit garden is not to be sniffed at – but then again, some of them are. Few visitors to a rose garden can resist leaning in to inhale the fragrance. We seem hard-wired to think ‘scent’ the moment after we think ‘rose’.
Shakespeare’s ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ can’t take all the credit. Scent associations trap memories like flies in amber in a lifetime’s layering of impressions. Continue reading “Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, and Memories of Roses”
In the world of home decor, magnolia is a best-selling colour that outlasts every new craze because it is so easy to live with, but its biggest fan would not call it exciting. On the inside of the loose, cup shaped flowers held on a magnolia tree, the sheeny colour has all the allure you could hope for, especially when backed with pink, as here. Continue reading “Magnolia x soulangeana”
I’m sharing a dozen garden paths we can imagine strolling up as (almost) a final hurrah for Becky’s January Squares.
They include angular paths and curved ones, wide and narrow paths, dominant ones and paths so unassuming we barely notice they’re there, in quite a range of materials, too. I’ll let the pictures do the talking: Continue reading “Up The Garden Path”
In Phantastes by George MacDonald, a country maiden warns the hero, Anodos, to shun the Ash and the Alder, but says he can ‘trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech.’ Sure enough, Anodos meets a Beech tree with a voice ‘like a solution of all musical sounds’ who longs to be a woman. She invites him to cut lengths from her hair, and uses them to create a protective girdle of beech leaves for his magical journey. Continue reading “Trust The Great Beech For a Bold, Bright Winter Garden”
As real travel would neither be safe nor legal, I’m indulging in photo-travel by using Becky’s Squares Challenge (Up) as an excuse to revisit our brief trip to Prague in January two years ago.
1. (Layered up) Locals and visitors have been adding slogans, quotes, I-was-heres and drawings to The Lennon Wall since the singer’s death. The wall has always been controversial, so authorities and activists have often covered up the colours with  fresh layers of paint, to find it quickly filled with artwork and slogans again. It is now protected by new rules (no spraying) while cameras help enforce the theme of peace and love. Continue reading “Twelve Snippets from Prague”
Susan Rushton 