Flowers and green things

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All tucked up

Posted in response to the Daily Post weekly photo challenge – this weeks theme ‘Enveloped’

This is a bud of an Allium.  Sorry, I can’t remember the name of this particular type of Allium, but its little individual flowers will soon burst out of this wrapper and in no time at all look like a brilliant blue firework.

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Dead or Alive?

Posted in response to the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge. This week’s theme – ‘Forces of Nature’

This gnarly, worm eaten,old apple tree in our meadow is all but dead, showing no new growth at the top at all.  But it’s still fighting for life, pushing out these blossoms towards the bottom. Wonder if it will produce any apples?

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Bores? I don’t think so!

Doing a bit of voluntary work sometimes brings the most surprising rewards.  I was assisting one of the ladies at the IT group where I teach a few weeks ago and happened to ask what her password was for something. ‘Hellebore****’ she said. Now, Hellebores happen to be amongst my favourite plants, and when we had the garden landscaped in 2013 I insisted on a bed planted only with them, so of course we got talking, and to my delight she told me that she was a Hellebore ‘breeder’ and had lots of unusual types in her garden.

This week, she invited me to go and see them and take a few ‘babies’.  Her garden is quite magical and bursting with Hellebores of all types and colours – spotty ones, double ones, ruffed ones, a quite gorgeous and rare bright yellow one… all currently in their full glory. She generously dug up seedlings and small plants and I came home with a car full!  They’ll take a couple of years to grow, but in the meantime I thought I’d share with you a few photos of those that I do have that are already in a profusion bloom!

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A little bit of springtime

Well, it’s a really miserable day here. No sign of the torrential rain stopping, so I’ve been looking through a few of last year’s spring photo’s to cheer me up.  Thought I’d share ’em!  By the way, that’s a teeny tiny spider on a miniature daffodil taken with a long ‘ol lens – well, you didn’t think I’d get close up now, did you? 🙂

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A Ghost of Christmas

Every year I buy myself a Poinsettia at Christmas. The shelves of pot plants with their brilliant red bracts (see all you doubters…I knew they weren’t proper flowers) in all of the supermarkets is a sure sign that Christmas is nearly here.  Lets face it though, within a week of purchase, most of those poor plants are languishing and wilting in our overheated, too dark, living rooms.  Mine are really no exception.  Normally I can barely manage to keep them alive until Christmas day.

However, this year I bought a hardy little blighter.  Believe it or not, It still looks as good as the day as I bought it and…yes, we’re halfway through February!! It is a first, so I thought I’d share this little reminder of the festivities with you. 🙂

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The first signs….

Despite the downpours and the freezing gale force wind today (that really, really, hasn’t been helpful while I was outside with my camera), there is evidence in my garden that the plants are waking up and that it’s not too long until spring.

As the ancient Chinese proverb says:

‘Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.’   It certainly seems so today!