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, 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 History, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Carmarthenshire, Spring, Wales on April 1, 2013 | 8 Comments »
Primroses beside the old canal at Pembrey in April 2006…
It’s April now, and icy as midwinter here in Wales. Spring’s growth has been set back a few weeks and my thoughts turn to an earlier and warmer Spring, when we walked beside the old canal at Pembrey, near Llanelli, Carmarthenshire.
Footpath beside the old canal at Pembrey…
These pictures were taken in (more…)
Posted in Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Nature, Spring on March 17, 2013 | 20 Comments »
Euphorbia after recent rain…
It has been a while since I have written about my garden, so this is a catch-up. Although I gloried in one spring day in February, since then we have gone back to winter. We had (more…)
Posted in Horses, Uncategorized, tagged horses on February 16, 2013 | 13 Comments »
Horsemeat butcher, Aix-en-Provence, 1990…
It’s only a picture. In this blog I usually aim to be non-controversial and I am very rarely topical. However, this old photograph has been sitting in my “miscellaneous” pile for decades and at last I see an opportunity to share it.
I took the photograph while on holiday in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France in the summer of 1990, using my old Ricoh SLR camera. Horsemeat is something we know it’s acceptable to eat in France, so I considered this image to be a snapshot of a different culture.
To those of you NOT in the UK, you may wonder (more…)
Posted in Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Nature, squirrels on February 10, 2013 | 18 Comments »
Tail of a grey squirrel, February 2013…
This is a common view from my kitchen sink – the bird table is right outside the window and the grey squirrels (Latin name Sciurus carolinensis) like to dangle from it to eat peanuts or sunflower seeds out of the bird feeders. Sometimes they just hug the feeder and suck, so they get through an awful lot of the birds’ food.
They are rodents and some people call them “tree rats” and I think the above picture shows (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 Birds, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged birds, Nature, weather, winter on January 19, 2013 | 25 Comments »
Song thrush (Turdus philomelos) in the snow…
Snow is a rarity here in Cardiff, as it is a city warmed by trade and industry on the soft south coast of Wales. So when we do get snow, I am soon out in the garden with my camera – even though there is not a lot to see.
The snow fell yesterday, but I saw it in the garden only as (more…)
Posted in Birds, Nature, Uncategorized, Wales, tagged birds, Carmarthenshire, wildfowl on January 11, 2013 | 14 Comments »
Mr and Mrs mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) at Llanelli WWT, late December 2012
Although we are now starting a colder and drier spell – maybe with snow on the way – we have had nothing but rain for months. Ideal if you have webbed feet!
So we recently made one of our regular trips to the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust reserve in Llanelli. At this time of year the (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…)
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