The garden is loving this weather, rain one day, warm sunshine the next and there is an abundance of flower as a result. I have an archway (well more like a tunnel really) that leads eventually to the lawn, I'm surprised it's managing to stand under the weight of the roses,
the clematis
and the Chilean potato plant.
The passion flowers are still to bloom.
I've been having troubles with Typepads new Compose Screen which has quite frankly put me off blogging a bit, it used to be so easy. Anyway they reckon that they are resolving the issues so here goes I'll try again with another flower pic:
I think it may have worked! Wonder if the links work yet?
My Grandmother kept a tiny bottle of "White Lilac" perfume on her dressing table but she wouldn't have Lilac flowers in the house. She said it was bad luck to bring them in the house, it was also bad luck to bring Queen Anne's Lace into the house, walk under ladders, put new shoes on the table and to cross knives.
I hope I'm not boring you all with these photographs of spring flowers. The blue skies and spring sunshine have driven me outside and it's such a pleasure to wander the garden with a camera too hand. I think I see things that I might have taken for granted, like the foamy flowers of the London Pride, one would never realise they were so exquisite unless one looked closely, those tiny dots and the almost heart shaped yellow spodges.
This one evokes yet another childhood memory. Like many children I was given a little patch of garden for my own, I was very young and I remember my Mother helping to build a rockery and there was a little brick path leading to the rockery. The edges to the path were planted with London Pride.
And what were the first plants I encouraged my sons to buy for their own little gardens? London Pride.
They might not have opened in time for May Day but the Lily of the Valley has more than made up for the slight delay with it's sweet bell like flowers and it's beautiful perfume. A fragrance that at once transports me to a a lost time, an innocent time of carefree days; as a child I had what I called a summerhouse in the garden, I suppose it was a playhouse really, in the spring it was surrounded with Lily of the Valley. So many of these spring flowers bring back wistful memories of the lost days of childhood.
Gardens, parks, tree lined avenues are a mass of pink blossom as the ornamental cherries flower there hearts out. So pretty and the bees appreciate them.
When I was a tiny child it was still okay to pick wild flowers and one memorable Spring I recall picking what seemed like armfulls of Bluebells with my Grandmother.In fact they only filled one vase. My Grandmother loved Bluebells but never had any in her garden.
When we moved to Willow House I was delighted that first Spring to discover masses of Bluebells throughout the garden. I was able to dig some up and present them to my Grandmother for her own garden. What I didn't realise then was that the Bluebells of Willow House weren't the delicate, arched native beauties of the British Isles but the coarser, often disparaged garden variety sometimes called "Spanish" Bluebells.
Bless her she never said a word other than to thank me.
I think it was in the year 2000 that one of our neighbours gave us a huge terracota pot with a hairline crack. He was moving from the area and didn't think the pot was up to the move. We thanked him and planted it up with herbs.
The little Bay Tree loved it and just grew and grew, eventually taking the pot for itself. This year for the first time it is in full flower, a mass of tiny pale yellow blossom.
Love the macro setting on the camera for taking close ups of flowers. Love taking close ups of flowers because then you can't see the weeds. Love the colour combination of this primula, first given to us 19 years ago by friends and now divided and planted all over the garden, beside the once pink indoor hyacinths that after a few years in the garden are busy reverting to their bluebell ancestry. But I probably should have taken this from further away, not on macro, then maybe the ground elder wouldn't have shown up quite so much!
I think the title says it all with regard to this macro pic of a daffodil. But I have been meaning to thank you all for your support during this daily posting, comments really do encourage one to carry on. Also thanks to those who have commented on the change in template. Would you believe that I'd often wondered why my photographs were so small compared to other blogs? I hadn't a clue that it was all down to the template, computer illiterate or what?
