Day2Day - week 8 - Butterflies

This week has been rather OK-ish weatherwise so my garden surprise visitor (the Buddleia) has been covered in all sorts of wildlife including some butterflies I hadn't seen before so here they are!

Day 1 - a Large White Butterfly - I think it's the pattern on the wing tips that decide whether it's a large or small white one!

Day 2 - It's my tatty neighbour again from a previous week but I called it a tortoiseshell and it's not. It's a Comma, I think. I had another this week that I had never seen before so I had to look it up on Google. I found a lovely Butterfly identification site here and while I was looking, I saw this one there so managed to find out exactly what it was.

Day 3 - A Painted Lady - I knew straight away that I would need to ID this one - haven't seen it since either so I was really lucky that it stayed where it was long enough for me to run upstairs, grab my camera, change to my zoom lens and get some shots!

Day 4 - A Small Heath butterfly - another I had to look up. This was was wandering round Mum's coneflowers and I knew I didn't have time to run for the zoom lens so this is my everyday lens and a tight crop :)

And Day 5 - My favourite British butterfly - a Peacock. When we decided to let the weed grow that is now an 8ft Buddleia, I was secretly hoping for a summer full of butterflies. We had a huge dark purple one in our garden when I was a child and I was always fascinated by these lovely delicate creatures. This beauty has visited for the first time today - just in time to make me smile in the sunshine and to fill slot number 5 in my day2day post :)

I can't believe I've managed to keep this up for 8 weeks already. It seems like only a couple of weeks since we started but I'm really enjoying it so here's to the next 8 weeks! I guess it's going to be a lot harder during the winter due to lack of light but I'll just have to get my thinking cap on for some interesting Still Life shots, won't I?

Day2Day - wk 7 - Just an Ifit week

What's an Ifit I hear you ask? If it got in front of my lens, it had it's photo taken! Very similar to my ifit meals - if it's in the fridge, throw it in the pan (also known as a sort of stir fry). Also a pretty horrid week all round and to top it off, I have failed to do a photo today so only 4 this week :(

Day 1 - Monday I tried to cook a cake to send to Lazygiraffe over on Etsy. We've been partnered up in a Cake Swap. This is the devastation of my kitchen after cooking AND it wasn't very nice either!

Day 2 - Tuesday and all the neighbourhood starlings decided my roof was the best for a party! I love watching them when they all fly up together but boy, do they make a noise meantime!
Day 3 - Wednesday and the sun came out for a while. This beauty (Red Admiral) was so busy stuffing his face, he didn't take any notice of me or my camera! I have cropped this one quite heavily so you can see his eye and his tongue (proboscis) quite clearly (only if you want to, of course!).

and Day 4, Thursday. Just yesterday morning, I heard a news report that the small tortoiseshell butterfly numbers have dropped 80% since the 1990's. I hadn't seen one all summer then just one day after hearing the report, there were two of them on my buddleia. This poor fellow has a very tatty wing so I'm guessing he's either been attacked by a bird (and got away) or he's an old boy.

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 :)

Day2Day - Views From My Armchair

Just a quick post and run this week I'm afraid. I've had a day off work today for a rest but so much has happened, been done, got sorted out - I'm thinking perhaps I should have gone to work for a rest! LOL

Anyway, this week I have been lazy - I have taken all these shots from my old armchair on our verandah - sounds posh doesn't it? Well, it's not! It's basically a small deck area on the back of the house and we've put some posts up and roofed it in clear plastic panels - we needed somewhere out of the sun to dry our scuba kit and as the garden is north facing, we couldn't see the point of spending loads of money to put a proper conservatory out there. So I dug out my 300mm zoom lens and tried to make some pretty photos without getting up - yes, I've pulled some funny positions but my bum was on the chair for every shot!

Day 1 - the yellow osteospermum - home to the infamous green bug thing from previous posts! After several weeks, I'm sad to report, the green bug seems to have moved on :(Day 2 - Not sure what it's latin name is but we call it an iceplant - I have a pink and a red one and like everything else in the garden this year, this is going bananas!

Day 3 - my lovely purple and cream callas are fading now, slowly turning green and tightening up again. This was Wednesday, today (Friday) they have almost all flopped over so it's time to say a fond farewell and hope they do as well again next year.

Day 4 - I turned my lens slightly skyward for this one - my neighbour has this beautiful pink rose climbing over an arch over her gate. The bluetits and wren love this rosebush and can be seen bug hunting regularly. Watching the baby starlings trying to land on some of the long shoots can be very funny too.

Day 5 - The end of another busy week and this lone pigeon sits cooing on Mum's tv aerial. The clouds were so pretty as a backdrop and I don't do many silhouettes so I thought it was worth a few clicks.

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 - Darling Dahlias

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Not much to talk about garden-wise this week, it's been another wet and grey week but with sunnny spells whilst I've been at work. The green bug is still sitting on the same flower, the new auriculas Mum potted up and left with me to look after, are still alive and the special Morning Glory (Convolvulus) is climbing its' frame very nicely thank you. I haven't killed anything yet but I'm guessing that's because of all the rain and me not having to water all those pots!

I begged a Dahlia from my neighbour yesterday (it was calling to me when I opened my bedroom curtains) and set up my little table top studio. I am so pleased I did! To say I am chuffed to bits is probably the understatement of the year! It follows along my abstract experiment (although it's not that abstract) - anyway here is my pride and joy from yesterday :-D


Hope you all have a good week, see you next time xx

Day2Day - Week 4 Mix It Up!

Well this week was another hectic week at work so I wasn't really concentrating or even thinking about my Day2Day so it's a bit of a mix this week.

Day 1, Monday, dawned with blue skies and fluffy little clouds - just in time to go back to work after a wet weekend.

Day 2, Tuesday, was a lovely hot day but then some really heavy showers and a bit of thunder in the evening. The skies cleared around sunset just in time to colour the clouds around the moon rising.Day 3, Wednesday - can't really remember what sort of day it was, just a really, really busy one. The sun did break through around teatime, just long enough for me to water Mum's pots and get a shot of her new Clematis.
Day 4, Thursday - another grey day all day but no rain. Had to boost this one a little in photoshop but you get the idea :) Gigantic allium heads hanging up to dry and making themselves irrestible to my macro lens :)
And last but not least, Day 5, Friday (Yay!!) playing with abstracts again - this time one of Mum's alstromerias - also known as a Peruvian Lily or Lily of the Incas. I like the colours in this one but perhaps the markings should be more in focus? Hmmm not sure.

I hope you've had a good week. Schools are breaking up for the summer this weekend and that usually means less traffic for me. This year, that also means more evening sunlight to shoot in so I'm looking forward to it too.