Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
When I happened upon Salix branches strung with yellow catkins, they made me think that bright is relative: on a dull late afternoon, they seemed like tiny candles.
I believe these are either Goat willow (Salix caprea) or Grey willow (Salix cinerea). It’s not easy to tell them apart at this stage while the stems are bare of leaves. Goat willows have broad, round leaves with bent, pointed tips; Grey willows have oval leaves with blunt ends. Continue reading “April Brights: Male Catkins”
Today is the Spring Equinox or the first day of astronomical Spring in the northern hemisphere and I’m as happy as a gnome with a flower. Continue reading “Celebrating Spring And Autumn”
When people are indoors, nature seems more in the spotlight and its imperturbability strikes me as a superpower.
Have daffodils always been this yellow and crocuses so purple? I pay attention, but it feels like I barely noticed before. Now it’s the turn of the deciduous trees. Continue reading “Spring Tree Canopies, Sunnyhurst Wood”
“Spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that grown-up people would grow tired of looking for them and give up the search…”
Oscar Wilde – De Profundis
Life is fragile enough for large mammals like us, so what security can these dainty flowers have? Quite a lot actually – these particular ones, that is. And I’m not referring to that attractive looking layer of bark mulch. Continue reading “As Good As It Gets If You Happen To Be A Flower”
This year it’s too easy for gardens to be on trend, the Pantone colour of the year being Greenery. Well… yes, I’ll go with that, but if Pantone’s colour trend experts think greenery is the colour for 2017, perhaps they should get out more. Hardly a passing trend, greenery should be named the colour of the millennium (in the hope it might, by some miracle, be the millennium to come, not the one we’ve recently left behind).
Bodnant Gardens, where these pictures were taken, had acknowledged the colour of the year with a knowing wink, but decided greenery was just the start. It was a great start – no one could deny that – but the surrounding countryside had got greenery off to a T too. So much so that after finally leaving the North Wales Expressway (an optimistic name on a very sunny Sunday) I found myself winding towards the National Trust garden along Llanrwst Road thinking “This land is such a bright green, it’s almost too much. How will the camera lens cope with this? Are my sunglasses not on?” (they were). Continue reading “Bodnant Gardens, Wales, In Spring Haute Couture”
My last visit to Dunham Massey was in winter, when the snowdrops were at their height. This time I didn’t take a single picture of snowdrops: they had either gone to seed or were looking bedraggled. A few early camellias were in bloom, but there are far more still at the tight bud stage. Continue reading “Dunham Massey in March”
Susan Rushton 