flowers

wonderful crumpled flowers on an aubergine plant

pepper flower
gailarda
blue ageratum, thankyou to Bob for identifying this!!

marigold, there is rain sitting on the petals
poppy heads
Daisy is watching birds flutter onto the roof
nice whiskers

Jane's new garden

lots of birdfeeders, I realy like this decorative seed feeder, there is one wee bird in the bottom if you look
attracting lots of birds
more waiting, sparrows look left, chaffinches look down
this corner was an old pond/rockery, grown over with nothing in it. love the paving stones with differet colour stones and plants, very pretty
same corner from a different angle, nice planting with lovely colours

brave enough?

most of my Wednesdays have been occupied for some time by horses owned by Barbara-Anne and Dave. they were kind enought to let me ride their much loved old mare Teddy. and I helped with Robbie too, long reining and playing games.

Robbie is a nice kind horse. so on Saturday, I climbed on the wall and climbed up on the horse(large). Barbara-Anne sitting on the fence.
brave enough to canter, which is good as usually I just send horses to sleep.
here's Dave, getting a bit more action out of Robbie than I did, but I'm going to practice!

scottish heritage?

photo taken by Shirley

Ty, an american cat I met on my holiday tour, lounges in his new tartan bed I sent for him. he gracefully (cattily?) consented to share the guest room with me so I thought he deserved a thankyou. there are two tartan mice blending into this picture if you look very closely

lazing on a sunny afternoon

well, sunny patches with threatening rainclouds. . .
I have never noticed before how foxgloves are closed up like parcels befor they open, these four together show the progression
and I love the pattern inside

a paler pink foxglove,
and the patterns again

this is a hosta flower,

and a poppy growing amongst the onions, with peas in the background
it has a funny petal arrangement, probably the result of many bee crosses

veggies growing

in the foreground of this bed are leeks, behind them are brussels sprouts(recently planted out when I cleared my first lettuce patch), cabbages and kale, also one red poppy trying to hide.
this Nyagous tomato is starting to ripen, changing colour very slowly, the skin looks rough and cracked but it should taste ok.

photosynthesis

self sown borage attracting the bees
self sown verbascum olypicum

I wonder how the plants cope with the lack of sunlight, it feels as if it has been so dull for so long I wonder how they keep doing it. there has been no recovery this year from the winter blues. photosynthesis an amazing process, and I quote them saying "if plants could not turn the sun's energy into food, we would all die"

on the fence

I took this photograph a couple of weeks ago,
chooks and cheeps adventures here

raindrops on saturday

anybody in Canada

my friend is looking to have this dollhouse repaired or replaced, is there anybody/know of anybody in Canada who can do this?

Robbie meets Rosemary

Robbie flutters his eyelashes, because he thinks he's gorgeous, he has been off proper work as his feet wern't too good the last time he needed shod. they have improved a lot over the last month so hopefully his shoes will be back on soon.
this is Smokeys mum Rosemary, asking Robbie to move his hindquarters, Parelli style. she works with Smokey using natural horsemanship tecniques and I think its something that can do horse and owner heaps of good and create a really good relationship.
and this is Katie, who's getting her picture on just 'cos she's pretty

a guiding paw

Sunday in the garden

I spent all day Sunday in the garden. I finished sieving one compost bin, which I had been rained off doing last weekend and then I used a surprising amount of it up immediatley just for replanting and a few bits to scatter inbetween plants. The first lettuce patch was taken up, distributed amongst neighbors and replanted with brussels sprouts plants. The carrot patch is very poor, mostly due to it being one of Tansys best place to sleep, everything was squashed and the ground compacted so seedling cant come up. I have planted some celeriac in one bare corner and will leave the rest to their fate of grow or be squashed. Various things in pots were found homes,and many weeds found themselves without one. The tomatoes were given another haircut, I also cut off a few flowering stalks as this is meant to give them more energy to put into the tomtoes they already have.
this poppy has self seeded just beside the bean wigwam, there is one in the onions too, not something to be weeded out.
this lily is flowering really well, it started off a couple of years ago as a bit of side-shoot.
and the clematis is smothering the shrub its meant to be growing through, I'll cut it right back when it stops flowering.

field poppys

self sown flowers, generous and vey welcome

I think I have posted similar photos recently, but they are so nice I cant resist

lots of rain

the water drops look so pretty, caught by the fine hairs on a sweet pea.
and sitting in the leaves, these were taken at the weekend in Rosemary's garden

best to hide out somewhere dry!

this is the all round view of my greenhouse, four photographs merged together, there are some blurry areas where the merges are. it measures 6ft by 7ft and its full! the plastic panes, which replaced the vandalised ones, seem to be holding up to the weather ok and the light levels are fine.