Posted in Gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Gardening, Nature, Spring on May 7, 2013 | 6 Comments »
Lesser celandine in the garden in April (iPhone image)…
Spring has been a long time coming this year. After auspicious signs of Spring in February, the weather took a cooler turn and although we have had plenty of dry weather, there is not yet much heat in the sunshine.
But the garden is catching up with itself, so here are some pictures taken in April and the early days of May.
On the nature front, there seem (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Uncategorized, tagged crafts, Gardening on April 24, 2013 | 11 Comments »
Rather fantastic Hooded Figure wood sculpture by Ed Elliott at Cardiff RHS Show 2013 – see http://www.edelliott.co.uk …
At the weekend we made our annual visit to the Cardiff RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) Show and this year the weather stayed fine. Here are some of my pictures and I will identify the suppliers’ websites where I can.
It was a very friendly show…
The friendly Bob the Butterfly and Gerry the Gerbera entertained…
We bought (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Gardening, Nature, winter on April 8, 2013 | 16 Comments »
Native ivy (Hedera helix) on a wet ash-tree trunk in March…
The cold weather persists, so I feel there is still time to enjoy the ivy, which stays luxuriant and green throughout the snowiest of winters but is so often forgotten when nature is in full, colourful bloom in the warmer months.
Ivy in December…
There is wild native ivy on the trees in the wooded part of my garden, and several “cultivated” ivies in the tamer part, planted by myself over the years but (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Gardening, Nature, Spring, winter on February 3, 2013 | 26 Comments »
Lemon yellow flowers of Mahonia – this is a later flowering variety, while my others flower in early winter…
Suddenly it’s February and the gradual lengthening of the days has become noticeable at last.
Recently we have had rain and hail and sleet and snow and gales. But yesterday for once we had clear blue skies and the temperature felt almost balmy at 6 degrees Celsius. Just for one day it felt like Spring was on its way.
The sunshine makes (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Gardening, Nature on December 14, 2012 | 5 Comments »
My paperwhite narcissi Ziva in early December – picture taken with my versatile Olympus C-765 Ultra Zoom
The pot of paperwhite narcissi was a bit of an experiment, really. I always thought they would be a good idea for Christmas and this year I actually got around to buying a do-it-yourself kit from Marks & Spencer.
I planted the three bulbs in their white oval pot on November 10 and the instructions said (more…)
Posted in Art & Design, Gardening, Photography, Uncategorized, tagged design, Gardening, photography on November 29, 2012 | 8 Comments »
The view from my window – with Photoshop stained glass filter…
This post is just a bit of playing around with Photoshop, really. I’ve had Photoshop CS3 for years but still love messing about with the “filters” options. They are such an easy way of creating a special effect with no artistic talent whatsoever!
As the basis for these experiments I used this image of (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Nature, Trees, Uncategorized, tagged autumn, Gardening, Nature, Trees on November 14, 2012 | 24 Comments »
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I always thought Vincent van Gogh’s cypress trees looked flame-shaped – so I’ve corrected the colour…
Trees are green, right? So I suppose it’s not surprising that people have taken notice when a tree is red. And many times on different continents they have likened it to fire. So here I am going to look at the various flame trees and burning bushes…
Fire and water – my Euonymus alatus leaves after rain this week…
I’ll tell you what got me thinking about this – it was my Euonymus alatus – also (more…)
Posted in Gardening, History, Nature, Uncategorized, Wales, tagged Ceredigion, Gardening, History, Nature, Wales on November 1, 2012 | 13 Comments »
Colourful nasturtiums in the garden at Llanerchaeron, Ceredigion, on a wet day in August 2012…
It’s November already and I still haven’t finished sharing my holiday snaps from August! On a wet day (and there were many) we visited the National Trust property at Llanerchaeron, in Ceredigion near the middle of Wales’s west coast.
The property at Llanerchaeron is a late 18th-century Welsh gentry estate – with a house, outbuildings, walled gardens and a small farm. The house is described as a villa, although that makes me think of a Roman country house, or a glamorous holiday home on the Mediterranean, or even a small town house in Edwardian times.
The villa, designed by John Nash, at Llanerchaeron
This one was (more…)
Posted in Gardening, Uncategorized, tagged Gardening, indoor plants on October 24, 2012 | 18 Comments »
I always thought of Ctenanthe’s leaves as pink and brown…
This is just a short post to pay tribute to a house plant I have lost. Her name was Ctenanthe, pronounced Tee-nanth-ee. I say “her” because that sound’s like a lovely woman’s name to me…
In fact (more…)
Posted in Birds, Gardening, History, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged birds, dorset, Gardening, wildfowl on October 12, 2012 | 14 Comments »
Upton House in Poole, Dorset – now the setting for a small country park
My childhood holidays in the late 1950s and 1960s were spent in Upton, a suburb on the northern edge of Poole in Dorset. My mother was born in Poole and Upton was where her mother and sister still lived in those days.
But Upton House was unknown to me until a few years ago, as it was in private hands. In fact my cousin now tells me that when she was little the local lady of the Upton manor would go around distributing largesse to poor families like ours!
In this blog post I intended just to show the pictures I took of the lovely flowers in the walled garden and some of the wildfowl you can see from the shore at the bottom of the garden, but (more…)
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