Today…

I would like to be here…

Yep.

You?

Images from: Shorelychicblog and West Elm. thank you.

Misbehaving Badly

Aquilegias which are well known for their promiscuous and perfidious behaviour are certainly living up to their reputation in my garden this spring. I can only recall planting one aquilegia in this border - the delightful two toned  'Nora Barlow' which is said to come true from seed. Yet this spring I have a pink tinged double white, a blue tinged double white, a dusky single pink, purple ~ both single and double as well as a most dubious two toned purple and white. I know that the all purple has probably drifted in from around the corner but as to the others I am left guessing their parentage. I think that 'Nora Barlow' is probably sulking as she is behind the others and has still to open fully. It may interest you to know that the Nora Barlow who this plant was named after was Charles Darwin's granddaughter. She was a keen gardener and lived to the age of 104. She studied genetics at Cambridge and attempted to hybridise various flowers including aquilegias. However the 'Nora Barlow' aquilegia was almost certainly not the result of one of her own experiments, since a similar form was known going back to the sixteenth century. 'Nora Barlow' grew in her own garden though and a friend was to pass on seed to the nurseryman Alan Bloom of Bressingham with the suggestion that he might like to stock the plant. A condition was that the plant was named 'Nora Barlow'.

If you are a fan of aquilegias and can travel to the Swansea area you might like to visit 'Touchwood', the garden of Carrie Thomas, who holds a national collection of aquilegia vulgaris and aquilegia hybrids. The garden is due to open this month ~ see here for details. Carrie also welcomes visitors by appointment at other times. She also sells a range of aquilegia seeds as well as seed of other cottage garden plants.

Women at work…

At dark thirty in the morning

three generations

of this family's women went to work…

My 82 year old mother…my 15 year old daughter…and moi.

To help construct a Habitat for Humanity home.

With a whole slew of other women from the community.

see the whole line-up of darling homes down the street?…all community built…every nail.

Today it was all women. Sisters, grandmothers, mothers daughters…

Building hope and home for a deserving family.

When the noon whistle blew…the family who we were building for served us lunch

homemade tamales. yum.

thank you Senora Vargas!

We learned, we worked shoulder to shoulder...

We built.

Habitat for Humanity…advocating for

simple, decent

and affordable houses in every community.

Help. Build. Belong.

you won’t be sorry.

Look For A Different View!

So one thing I like to do is find a different way of looking at a scene that's been done a thousand times before. Reflections, unusual angles, or just the videographers LCD screen! Hope his work isn't copyrighted, or he may sue me for using his material, even if it is just a fraction of a fraction of a second...

End Of Month View ~ April 2011

Rather late in the day but my efforts to take photos on the 30th April were thwarted by a rather gusty wind. At long last it calmed down enough yesterday for me to get out with my camera but I decided on a change of scenery for this month. I am sure that like me you are also getting fed up of looking at that overgrown castor oil plant that has been awaiting transplant for an age. So instead I am taking you back to the hellebore bank which I blogged about earlier this year here.  Now I am using artistic lisence and extending the garden boundaries slightly for this post. As I wrote in my earlier post "Our garden is bordered on one side by a surface water stream - on the other side of the stream there is a sloping bank which rises up to meet the main road. This area is about 500 square metres and contains some twelve mature trees which were there before us". I am slowly trying to plant this unadopted area up ~ earlier in the year there are snowdrops and I am also introducing some hellebores. However every year completely unaided and unabetted by me there is a scene which takes my breath away, when for a couple of weeks the area is covered with a foamy sea of anthriscus sylvestris, commonly known as cow parsley. The odd bluebell is thrown into the works. I can almost imagine that I am living in the country instead of just off a busy main town road.

The end of month view is hosted by The Patient Gardeners's Weblog each month and is a excellent way of keeping track of the seasonal changes in your garden.

Sometimes you have to get down and dirty!

In this case it was down on my belly in the aisle of a packed church with people looking at me funny... but I got the shot I wanted!

Note to self: humility is good for me.