Green Thumb Sunday - slightly off topic!

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We had a bit of excitement here at Allsorts Towers this week! Hubby has been complaining of hearing little crawly/rustly type noises in the attic for a week or two now (didn't stop him snoring though!) so we stuck our heads up through the attic hatch and found out very quickly what the problem was - WASPS! So one quick phone call to the pest control guy and it was all dealt with in double quick time.

I'm not a great fan of chemicals and poisons but wasps freak me out somewhat so it had to be done. Not to mention there are young children and elderly people in the immediate neighbourhood who could have been hurt if the wasps swarmed nearer the end of the summer. We've had to wait a couple of days before going back into the attic but we braved it today and I took my camera with me.

The beam on the left is about 6 inches (15cm) so you can gauge how big this thing is! We can't get to it to see how far back it goes (mind you, I don't really want to get too close anyway!) but hubby reckons it a miniature Borg Cube - resistance is futile and all that :-)

Luckily I had guessed I wouldn't be able to get too close so I had taken my long lens with me. The quality is not brilliant but you can see how amazingly intricate it is from this shot. I may have to persuade hubby to try and retrieve it (with gloves on though) so I can get some wonderful macro shots - sort of an apology to all the wasps that were killed for our safety/convenience.

It's been a very grey week - constantly threatening rain but never actually raining. I work about 20 miles away and Thursday morning we had an almighty downpour with thunder and lightening. I thought 'good, I won't have to water the garden tonight' but when I got home, my town had had a little shower - not even enough to completely wet the bottom of the water butt! So it was back to the watering can duty for me. Hope you've had a good week and your gardens are growing well, catch you next time :)

Green Thumb Sunday - I grew these!

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I often talk about Mum's garden but the truth is, Mum does a lot in my garden too so I sort of think of the plants as hers although the mess and weeds are mine! But I do have one or two plants that I have chosen, bought, nurtured (and killed) and this hosta is one of them. It has flowered faithfully every year since I bought it and has even survived a broken pot and being replanted. I thought I would pay homage to my hosta by immortalising one of the flowers here in my blog :)

It's been very hot here for the last few days but I had to do some watering even though I was melting! This little fella decided to sing me a song to keep me company so I very carefully came indoors, grabbed my camera and went back outside. With the camera in front of my face, he didn't get spooked so I kept quietly talking to him and clicking away until I was only about 2 feet away - this was the best shot as he looked at his reflection in the lens I think but I even managed to get the highlight in his eye.

Needless to say, I was chuffed to bits but I just backed away again, still with the camera in front of my face until I though I was far enough away not to spook him. I was wrong, as soon as I removed the camera, he flew off with an alarm call to wake the neighbourhood!

Green Thumb Sunday - All Things Allium

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This week seems to be a beautiful but smelly one! Alliums include garlic, onions, chives and shallots which have some of the prettiest flowers and seed heads in the garden. This year Mum has a bumper crop of chives and they are flowering like billy-o :)

She had the ornamental alliums last year and this year only 2 have produced flowerheads but oh my gosh - what flowerheads they are - at least the size of a football (soccerball) if not bigger! I couldn't take a macro shot if I tried - they are that big!

And somewhere in my garden photo trips this year, I have also shot some self seeded garlic - at least I think they are - they smelt divine in the dappled shade after I'd brushed past them which is what made me notice them. I remember clearing some longer grass away to get the photo so I must have missed them on the first walk by. The ornamental allium is now hanging up to dry so I will shoot that later - I think it will make a wonderful abstract especially if I just focus on one seed pod.

The second photo in the previous post is also this allium - I managed to get the macro lens right in between the flower spikes and just focused on the ball at the centre - I like it :)

Green Bug Thingy

Not sure what this little critter is but it looks like a bit like a grasshopper to me or maybe it's a cricket but I've never seen a cricket so I can't say! Anyway, I was playing with my macro lens and have decided that it's a tricky pest (the lens, that is) especially without a tripod. These shots are hand held but even so, the depth of field is so shallow, huge chunks of the picture are out of focus. It's definitely going to take some getting used to as most of my favourite shots are fairly straight, in focus type shots not arty-farty, soft focus, abstract ones.

I've been working on some more abstract shots though so once I've processed them, I'll post them here for some opinions :)

As for the question I posed the other day - yes, the tulip one is the photoshop soft focus one. The rose is almost straight from camera.

Astrantia - in all their Glory

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I finally found out what this flower is called! It's an Astrantia and I've seen it in deep wine colours through to pale green/almost white. It spreads pretty well and looks after itself aapparently which is probably why it's also called Hens & Chicks (not to be confused with the Sempervivum's). Not much to blather about today so just enjoy the piccies :)

More Flowers from Mum's Garden

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Why Mum's garden again, I hear you ask. Well, she's the keen gardener, I'm just the flower photographer! My garden is very small and basic - mainly paved with one small border and a couple of shrubs on the other side for balance. The paving is a wildlife haven though - I have ants, woodlice, snails and loads of self-seeded 'weeds'. It takes me about an hour a week just to keep it relatively clear of growth but I do potter a bit occasionally. Anyway, without too much more waffle, here's a few beauties.

Does anyone else have formatting problems with their blog? It doesn't seem to matter whether I preview or just guess but I always have to edit and re-publish about 6 times to get it looking OK.

Snails, Snails and more Snails

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I missed last week 'cos I was away on holiday in Menorca and I don't have any new stuff from my own garden because I've been washing/drying and ironing for most of the last 2 days! But I did get some vaguely garden related piccies whilst I was on hols so I thought I'd post them.

I usually go on holidays around May time so often catch places in their spring colours. Cyprus was all yellow and white wild flowers with a teensy bit of pink. Menorca on the other hand, is pinks and purples with the odd splash of white (cow parsley) and some patches of red poppies. This piccy shows some pale pink convolulus and what looked like a clover but in lilac. There was another convolulus in many places which was a very deep bluey-purple and with really quite large flowers. It was all past its' prime by the time I got there though so no decent piccies.

The bane of my life with a garden full of hostas are snails - I can home to very lacy leaves so I have to get out there with the snail traps soon. Over in Menorca, I found this lovely little fella on a reed alongside a little boggy area. Never noticed them before but it looked a bit weird having this fat juicy snail on such a slender stem.

Further down the path, there was this huge number of snails on this grass like plant - this is only a small section of the plant but it was obviously very popular with the local snails!

More holiday photos to come soon but I wanted to get these ones up tonight. It seems like I always post late on a Sunday evening but that's just the way my weekends work out I think. Back to work tomorrow which I have to admit, I'm really, really not looking forward to. There's just so much stuff I want to be doing but it's work that pays the bills so I guess I'll have to drag myself out of bed anyway.

Green Thumb Sunday - More Auriculas

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Well, as promised last week, the sun came out gently again today (and yesterday) so off I went to Mum's garden to grab some more shots of her auriculas. Have to say I am really pleased with how these turned out so I will stop blathering on and just let the photos speak for themselves :)

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.