Or not, depending on my mood
As well as the three broken gladioli stems I’ve rescued from the garden and put in a vase on the dining room table, my husband also brought home a bunch of deep purple blooms to fill out the arrangement.
I tried to photograph them looking all dramatic and interesting, but instead they just looked boring and dull so I’ve applied an online artistic creative filter effect (free to use) to give them a more abstract finish 🙂
Red and green always seems such a Christmassy combination, even at the beginning of September! And for the past couple of days as well as a trio of bluetits a little robin with its fluffy orange-red breast has been feeding at our bird feeder, so nature seems keen to remind me that winter will be coming soon. Thanks nature, I know the fast-cooling weather has been a little uncertain lately but personally I haven’t actually quite finished with summer yet, and surely autumn still needs to have her beautiful blaze of glory before chilly winter blows over us with her icy breath and frozen fingers… 🙂
A medley of flowers from my garden bidding a final farewell to August for today’s Flower of the Day 🙂
Delicate and dreamy pastel shades for today’s Flower of the Day ❤
Another damp drizzly day, so hopefully the delicateness of the pastel-coloured flower heads pictured against the wispy pale green fern fronds makes up for the dull light 🙂
A pale peach-coloured gladiolus in our garden for today’s Flower of the Day 🙂
This morning I had a now-or-never moment and decided to paint something – anything – just to get started again. So I chose a thistle – I found an image I liked as a base and drew a basic pencil outline before starting to fill in the base wash colour. Once that dried, I added a second layer of colour, giving a bit more definition. Then after that dried, I added the detail.
It’s not ever going to be an accurate photographic reproduction, it’s always definitely going to be an ‘artist’s impression’ of anything with me. Even from this first attempt after along time I can see I’m still more of a suggestion and hint kind of painter, but that’s ok with me. The main thing is I’ve had fun, and woo-hoo, look, I’ve actually painted something! 🙂
The old plum tree is really heavy with fruit this year, to the extent that we’ve already lost a couple of its most heavily-laden branches – one even hit the greenhouse, falling from on high with a resounding crack and breaking a pane of glass on its way down so not a great start to our gardening relationship. Sadly we’ve reached the conclusion the tree is simply too old to be safe in the garden any more, so this year – our first – will probably have to be its last.
But for now the fat plums that remain huddled in place on the tree are ripening slowly, a few advance party early adopters have already fallen on the ground and the birds certainly seem to be enjoying eating them so we’ll see how things go over the next month or so. Hopefully we should still end up with a decent crop of sweet, juicy plums to share with the rest of the family – we’ve certainly had plenty offers from everyone to help use them up when the time comes! 🙂
The logistics of photographing a 2.5m tall sunflower yesterday had me balancing precariously on the top step of my kitchen step-stool in the middle of an earthy flower bed, and even then I still couldn’t quite reach high enough to see the flower head full on – holding my camera up above my head and clicking blind was the best I got.
Today the sunflower head is definitely looking more ‘open’ but the weather is damp and dull and grey with a thick covering of cloud so I’m going to wait until after work to see if the sun comes out a bit, and if so I’ll try again. This is my first ever sunflower, and I so want to have a least one decent photograph of it to remember it by! 🙂
When our five year old grandson was given some giant sunflower seeds earlier in the year to plant in little pots on the kitchen windowsill no-one expected any miracles to occur but to his delight three grew into little plants.
He gave one to us, a gangly foot-high skinny stalk, carrying it himself so carefully to deliver it safely, so I duly planted it in a sheltered spot in the garden by the back fence and promised him I’d look after it.
We live in the chilly North of Scotland, and so I had no idea if a giant sunflower plant would even survive up here, never mind flower. I’ve watered it and watched it, fingers crossed it didn’t die, and here it is now with a proper yellow head.
It’s not fully opened as yet, and at 2.5m the plant has over-shot the fence and has grown way too tall for me to capture face to face without the aid of a ladder, but look, we actually have a real giant sunflower growing in our garden!
Big smiles all round for our beautiful Scottish sunflower 🙂
