Sonntag, 26. Juni 2016

Lonely Bouquet Day 2016

My adopted bouquet
I had the massive luck to find a Lonely Bouquet in Newbury today. I was having breakfast at the teashop at the canal, watching the swans (a group of girls named some of them Daisy, Lily, Poppy and Derek). When I left for the car park, I saw the bouquet lying on a bench. I read the card attached and just had to adopt it.

Today is Lonely Bouquet Day 2016, an initiative dedicated to making people happy - with flowers. You 'abandon' a bouquet for a stranger to find and to make them smile. Just love the idea - I sort of heard about this before. I popped the sunflowers in a jug, on the photo they still look a bit droopy as they had spent an hour in the car. My adopted bouquet was was abandoned by Helen Vickers of Willow & Blooms in Newbury. Thank you so much, Helen!

While having my lunch I spotted a visitor to the garden, resting on a Clematis leaf. I need to find out which kind of dayflying moth this is - being a fan of moths I just had to grab my camera. It stayed for more than 1 hour in my garden.

Much love,
Qaroline

Mystery moth

Selfportrait with pint of milk.

Samstag, 18. Juni 2016

Mottisfont Timewarp


Sorry for being so silent of late - I have been on the road and saw plenty of gardens but haven't really had time to post. In the last month I visited Mottisfont, where the national collection of historic roses is housed, twice - once when my parents were on their annual visit (which was a bit too early) and today, so I thought I post the photos from these visits to show the massive change that can happen to a garden in three weeks. As an interlude I am also posting photos from Spinner's Garden, a privately owned woodland garden in the New Forest, where I visited last weekend on one of my trips to the seaside.

Much love,
Qaroline

Mottisfont, fourth weekend in May 2016

I have a soft spot for old plane trees

One of the very few roses already in bloom


Everything still looks very green



In Spinner's Garden, New Forest. Fantastic structural details

Impressive red rhodo

Stunning eucalyptus tree in Spinner's Garden, it sheds its bark in wintertime

Mottisfont today. Way more colour

Still fascinated with love-in-a-mist as a companion plant for roses and pinks



Lavender hedging slowly gets into gear



My camera does much better when the sky is overcast

Cottage with Hamish and basil plant