Day2Day - week 2

This week has been hellish busy at work but I've been a good girl and still managed to pull something out of the camera for the Day2Day group daily challenge. If you haven't seen this group, the idea is to take a picture every day, Monday to Friday of something ordinary but beautiful, in order to improve your photography or just for a challenge.

Started off the week a bit late so had to find something that was still getting some sunlight in the evening - ta-dah a bud of the mysterious 5ft visitor - turns out it's a verbascum.

Tuesday - the sun was just dropping as I got the camera out so another quick dash to get this lovely pink Candytuft. Gave it quite a hard crop, not only to get rid of some of the background rubbish but also to experiment with a square format.

Wednesday - inspiration struck as this was quite dull in colour - pop the red leaf in photoshop. All I've done is convert the original to black and white using a channels mixer layer, then erased that layer over the red leaf.

Thursday - another race the evening sun shot - this time using the shadow as part of the picture.

And last but not least Friday - a beautiful Spirea Japonica 'Shirobana' flower. This shrub was a cheap find in the bargain bucket somewhere. It was just a stick with 2 buds but has been flowering every year for about 10 years now. The flowers are white, pink or a mixture of the two. This is a closeup (obviously!!) of a white flower head.

Green Thumb Sunday - The Sun Came Out!

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Yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far - it hit 22 degrees centigrade on our north facing verandah so it must have been much warmer in the actual sunshine. I actually managed to move my butt, pick up my camera and wander over to Mum's garden (only about 30 yards away tho') to take some photos.

Why Mum's garden, I hear you ask. Well I'm not much of a gardener really - I know loads of flower/plant names and even quite a few of the latin ones but that's just because I bought loads of gardening magazines a few years back when we were trying to design our garden. It never came to much but I did get to know quite a few plants! Mum on the other hand could probably spend all day, everyday pottering in her garden and mine as well now that hers is so full! She can never remember names though so between us, we make a good team!

One of her favourite flowers is the auricula family. She has about 20-30 different varieties in her little patch - some special named varieties in individual pots and the more common ones grouped in larger planters and troughs. These two photos are the best of the batch but once she's home from holiday and can supervise me moving the special ones around for better lighting, I'm going to do some more.


In my garden, my hostas are just beginning to show through and my darling acer (japanese maple) is doing really well. He's called Arnie 'cos he's grown from little more than a stick into a beautiful example of treehood! I used to name my special plants - Terry Triffid got eaten by our cockatiel and Sam the spider plant died of over watering. I've learnt much since then but still manage to kill houseplants on a regular basis.

Garden plants tend to fare a bit better - I only 'look after' them for the first few weeks to help them settle in - after that, they're on their own. I think that's probably a good thing given my past record, don't you?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.