Daily treasures

The garden overwhelms me with its beauty.
Knowing how ephemeral flowers are, I walk round and round, covering miles during the day, not to miss a moment of these days of glory. You can keep your Chelsea, with its crowds and hype: the end of May is the time to enjoy our own gardens at their best.

This Azalea has overwintered outside. When the flowers are at their best, I drag the tub into the kitchen, so I can enjoy the spectaculair flowers close up, without them getting spoilt by rain.

A huge Wisteria, with these subtle lavender/pink pendulants, covers my kitchen window. It is like living in a tree house. Birds can't see me inside when I'm doing the washing up. I can observe them unnoticed. The firecrest likes to take his exercise on the branches, using them like a gym.
This variety of Japanese Wisteria Rosea is one of the rare pink varieties and is fully hardy and withstanding temperatures down to circa -15 C

It is known as Wisteria Sinensis Rosea "Pink Ice" or Japanese Wisteria Floribunda Honbeni
As with all Wisteria varieties the best way to encourage prolific blooming in late Spring/early summer is to prune them back after flowering, really you can’t go wrong with the pruning – as even a hardy trim back will encourage a spurt of growth and lots
of flowers in the next season.

White foxgloves are springing up all over the place, showing off their brilliant patterning.

This is Amaryllis 'picotee' I have two of these tubs now also in the kitchen.

I'll sow any colour of Cosmos, as long as it is white :-)

This is for Nick's page HERE

and for Denise's page HERE

what flower is this then?

a useless one, that's what.

Not a very inspired image of an uninspiring flower.
I couldn't see any way to make it look interesting. This has never happened before.

I set the aperture to f/1.8 in order to draw in the background, but softened so as not to compete.
I may not always succeed, but I usually have an idea to try out.

I draw the line at bokeh, which is now old hat and as predictable as this flower. Actually, I never liked bokeh much as it always seems very gimmicky. I tried a layer, using pine bark with a good texture. No good at all.

Half of the bunch of flowers I bought were deep purple, almost black and completely absorbent of light. They were totally unphotogenic.

I tried just about every camera I have. Only my big Nikon made at least a half decent image. These flowers will not enter my home ever again. I 'd rather have dandelions. At least they have personality.

I tried again, after the kind encouragement from NZ-Betty and a few fair ones, or at least better ones came out with yet another camera. So these ones are for you, Betty:

and thank your for making me not give up.