This is the start of our summer season so English strawberries are ripening and are lovely.  Meanwhile, the season of one of the imported fruits that I like has already closed.  I mean the blood orange which we import from Spain and Italy.  It looks strange inside - probably you would think that it had gone bad!:


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Here are a few quick pictures from my garden.  Last year, the tall garden wall between me and the road was replaced, so I needed to empty the flower beds (in order that the builders had space to work) and, this year, the new red brick wall looks very startling and bare and red. So I planted some runner bean plants in pots beacuse the bean plants ( Read more... )

At this time of year, I spend quite a bit of time in my garden which, now that the rain has stopped, is beginning its summer display of colours.

Today, I enjoyed the way that this large hemerocallis (literally in Greek "for a day beautiful") complements the red brick of my old house (which you can't see in the photo here - sorry!) and also offers ( Read more... )

This weekend has vanished into a kung fu exam and into making the most of the sunny weather/growing season by working in the garden.  I won't bore you with the details of either but I'd like you to enjoy a photo from my garden today of the lovely Japanese peony "kinkaku". The blooms are more than a hand's span across and the scent is as powerful ( Read more... )

I'm ignoring the fact that we're already eating windfall apples and that I could see my breath when I cycled to work this morning:  here's a summer flower post (roses this week after rain - well, this is England) and a glimpse of the new arrival for the Gackt gallery (poster promoting the Joetsu Uesugi Kenshin festival in which Gackt is again ( Read more... )

As I can't send the real flowers from my garden as a token of the huge thanks I owe to the generous and wonderful ditch_gospel for an unexpected and undeserved saiyuki (manga series) gift which arrived this morning, I thought I'd post some photos from today for everybody to see.  Here are three different views of the garden in general: 
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The weather has been especially nice for the past week and England always looks good in May anyway so we are treated to lots of flowers at the moment.  Here's my fragrant Japanese peony which has 15 of these huge blooms: 
  
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It has been a strange week - truly a farewell to Summer (and hello to getting up in the dark), with an upsetting funeral that de-railed a couple of other projects requiring more presence of mind than I possessed at the time.  I'd wanted to make a post here about my trip to the sea last month, but I need to edit the photos first, so - instead -


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This morning I woke up early and went out into the garden with a camera.  The dew produced some strange effects and the season was at last showing some bright flowers to tempt the bees out of hiding.  I've made 3 composite images to give you the idea in a small space, but the original larger versions of the photographs are available if someone has ( Read more... )