This morning I’ve been outside testing my new photoboards again. I simply stood the Barn board behind a hellebore and took a few shots. I used this board both horizontally and vertically to see which I liked the best. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get images like this. To me this looks like a hellebore growing at the base of an old timber building. What do you think?
January and February have flown by with orders flooding in from all over the UK. I would like to thank you most sincerely for ordering your flower seeds from me. I wish you a very happy and productive season with flowers galore. Yesterday before I started packaging orders for posting I took an hour out to take some flower photos.
I like getting up early. Usually I pop outside before breakfast to open up my garden studio and get things ready for the day ahead. I love that quiet time before everyone else rises. I like to think and plan but sometimes I’m distracted by the natural world. In January there are huge V shaped formations of geese flying low in the early morning mist, squirrels searching for the conkers and acorns they buried in autumn and wild ducks rooting through the borders for their sluggy breakfast. Around here it’s easy to be side-tracked I find!
Cherry Brandy roses are some of the most glamorous roses I have ever clapped eyes on.
The last day of November has been a complete washout here with wind and rain for most of the day. Despite storm Clodah hitting us (our third storm in three weeks) a patch of Scabiosa atropurpurea are still in bloom in the garden and what’s more they are full of buds. You may know them as Pincushion flowers. They are tall annual flowers, impossibly glamorous and lightly scented. Here’s a blue one – photo taken in August outdoors.
A trio of seed heads.
Most of the seeds have been blown away.
Just a few papery white seeds remain on the skeleton flowers.
There are still some leaves left on our trees despite Storm Barney. The sun has managed to break through occasionally and those shafts of sunlight created some magical moments. This is Hornbeam Carpinus betulus. I can’t tell you how happy I am that these leaves are still clinging to the trees… at least for now. They are ragged and quite past their best but under the circumstances they are looking good to me today!
The weather is foul here in North West England. We have had a lovely mild autumn so far and it seems that we are paying for it now. We are feeling the brunt of ex hurricane Kate… the first storm of the season to hit us and the Met Office have named this storm Abigail. We have had torrential rain and gale force winds for the past two days. In places six to eight inches (15-20 cm ) of rain fell in 24 hours. That’s more than a month of rain… a heck of a lot of extra water. Trees have fallen and there is flooding in some low lying areas.
I spotted this burgundy Dahlia in a beautiful garden yesterday. The Dahlia was perfect but a wide shot showing the surrounding plants did little to enhance it… even though they were also beautiful in their own right. The plants around the Dahlia were bright orange Red Hot Pokers, a clump of pale pink Phlox, purple Malva and a swathe of golden grass – probably Calamagrostis brachytricha.
There is often no need for a huge barrier to keep people or livestock in or out. A narrow piece of red tape stretched between posts keeps horses in a field, a kerb raised just a few inches keeps people on the pavement and cars on the street. A Ha-Ha will keep farm animals from straying into your beautiful new garden. There’s a horizontal line just behind the urn in the header photo above. That’s the Ha-Ha. Here’s the official description on a sign at Levens Hall in Cumbria, England.