Seagull surprise for a hungry crow…

This seagull was interested in the crow’s meal…

I don’t usually do short posts, but I just wanted to share this picture, as it was such a surprise.

On Sunday I heard a crow making a lot of noise, so grabbed my camera with a longish lens and went to find out what all the fuss was about. All I could see was the crow on a neighbour’s roof, with some scavenged food. So I pointed the lens through the window and snapped, just hoping to get a reasonable portrait.

I swear that as I pressed the button, the seagull wasn’t there, or even on my radar, but I saw a flurry of wings as it went click!

So that’s why the crow was making so much noise…

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Flame tree and burning bush…

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

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Llanerchaeron, Ceredigion – a fruitful estate…

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

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Upton House – captive flowers and wild fowl

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

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September garden snapshots…

Sunny Rudbeckia Tiger Eye Gold, still in its pot, having been bought in August…

Although I still have a couple of summer trips from Dorset and West Wales left to share, I thought it was time to put on record what has been going on in my own garden, too.

This time last year we were having a heatwave in the UK, but this September has

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Devil’s Bridge and the Punchbowl…

Three bridges built on top of each other at Devil’s Bridge, Ceredigion…

One of the highlights of my trip to Ceredigion a few weeks ago was an hour or two spent at Devil’s Bridge, high up the valley from Aberystwyth in the middle of Wales’s west coast.

We went there to take the Vale of Rheidol steam railway back down the valley – but

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Another plant of mystery identified…

Mystery plant on the gravel, June 2012…

One plant has haunted me all summer. I had never seen it before, or at least never noticed it, but now it was springing up everywhere.

I first saw it on the gravel bed in the “civilised” part of my wooded garden and I thought

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Blackbird gymnast goes for gold…

This blackbird (Turdus merula) flings itself at the bird fat and pecks off chunks…

What’s that they say about the Olympics? Faster, higher, stronger?

This blackbird in my garden has got into the Olympic spirit, exercising on the bird fat for weeks in the run-up to the London 2012 Games. Its technique is to hurl itself at the fat and knock pieces off, then drop to the ground to eat them. I think it’s a method copied from the magpies.

Many of the

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Blue skies, nothing but blue skies…

Blue skies over Penarth Pier – although this was a winter sky, in December 2009…

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies…
Since the jetstream moved north again a couple of weeks ago and summer arrived at last, I can’t get that song out of my head. Here’s the version by Frank Sinatra…

We had maybe a fortnight of dazzling blue skies and scorching sun here in Wales but now it’s turned changeable again. Which is the way I like it, as it

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Wetter days and better days…

Wet pelargonium in the garden in summer 2012 – more plant pictures later in this post…

As anyone living in the UK will tell you, it has been one awful summer – cold for the time of year and wet, wet, wet.

Although March and May were dry, June and July have been so bad that

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