Veg Plotting

It's been great to have some quality time on the patio this week culminating in yesterday's partial eclipse. With the live stream to hand, we had fun with our hastily made pinhole projector (a piece of card pierced with a paper clip), playing with the image on our hands, then NAH decided to carefully take a direct photo of the sun. 'That won't work', I said, and I was right... and wrong, with the sun behind its mackerel sky veil blazing forth as usual, but the camera lens flare revealing a perfect image of the sun bitten by the moon. * = I've had Midnight Oil's Earth and Sun and Moon on the brain all week; especially appropriate for yesterday's celestial event.

If there's one flower which shouts 'Spring is here!', then daffodils must be it, and with perfect timing Daffodils  also did the same last week when it hit the bookshop shelves. I was lucky to receive a copy to review and tempt you... and temptation is easy when comes in huge dollops of gorgeousness as Daffodils does. This is thanks to Georgianna Lane's exquisite and bountiful photography accompanied by Naomi Slade's cheerful, evocative and informative writing. A book that's both useful and looks ravishing is one of the hardest feats to pull off and here we have one that looks effortless in this achievement thanks to the hard work by author, photographer and publisher alike. It's a book that deserves to be left out permanently, for both frequent referral for key information as well as reading purely to lift one's mood. The book has three main sections: the first gives us a short tour of the history and botany of daffodils - aka Narcissus to give them t...

It's Bank Holiday time for us to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and amongst the usual Union Jacks and bunting, Chippenham has put its own special touches to the celebrations. Like many communities we have some special postbox toppers and I found the one above earlier this week gracing one in Monkton Park. I know our Knatty Knitters have other plans afoot, so I'm off to explore the centre of town later today. The Museum has had a couple of Jubilee projects I've been involved with. The Young Photographers group worked hard on their '70 Years, 70 Faces' and found at least one face per year of the Queen's reign. NAH and I went along to see ours at the Yelde Hall and add a new meaning to 'we were beside ourselves'! You may recognise a couple of the faces as Mark Allum (below me) and Lisa Lloyd (top right) from Antiques Roadshow live in Chippenham. I think NAH has fared particularly well in the photos, but then I'm biased! I - along with my WI...

The New Year is the traditional time to review the time just gone, and I can't think of a better way than by showing you some of my favourite photos from my Instagram account. They're a nice mix of seasonal scenes from local walks; little vignettes courtesy of VP Gardens ; plus a few from our times away in Dorset and Yorkshire. It's good to be reminded of some of the good times after what has been another trying year for us all. May 2022 be a much better one for you and yours x

This week we said our final goodbyes to NAH's aunt, who passed away peacefully in early December at the grand age of 94. With her passing we no longer have any distance caring responsibilities, plus the elder Chapman baton has passed to NAH and and his elder brother. I'm finding it quite hard to adjust to these circumstances, as part of what's made me who I am the past 13 years or so is no longer there. In the meantime, I've spent quite a lot of time over the past few weeks thinking about the good times with my aunt-in-law, who was a lot of fun and the source of many of our good times. Part of her lasting legacy is the family's love of cats and the annual cat calendar. For many years a December delight was the Whiskas one plopping onto our doormat; she'd saved many a label from her cat's favourite tinned food to provide this regular event. Whiskas stopped doing their calendar around 10 years ago, and we took on the mantle of providing one, firstly with photo...

I don't often 'play' with my photos after I've taken them, but as soon as I'd used a posterize app on this cheeky little robin in my garden, I simply knew I had to use it as this year's Christmas card. Have a wonderful festive season, no matter what life has thrown at you this year. I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

Driving home across Wiltshire last Saturday towards sunset and nearly blinded by the light, it was well worth my discomfort to come across this misty autumnal scene across the fields near Charlcutt . For once I've decided to crop the photo, so the result obeys the rule of thirds . I don't usually have much luck with misty photos as mine usually look quite dull and nothing like the scene I saw. Whilst there's still room for improvement, I'm happy with this one. The lower sun in the sky and the time of day (about an hour before sunset) must have helped 😊

It's nine years since our last visit to Liverpool and my postcard , and the building work along the waterfront which was much in evidence at that time is now complete. Those familiar with previous times may mourn the loss of the old character of this part of the city, but for this visitor it made for a magical Sunday morning stroll. We were staying in the city centre, so it's just a 5 minute walk to reach the start of our weekend wander at Albert Dock . I love strong shapes and combined with their reflections, I spent a while trying to do these justice with my camera. 'Laurel and Hardy' were being briefed outside the Merseyside Maritime Museum . Their day had just started when I strolled by. Sadly I didn't have time to go into Tate Liverpool , but that didn't matter as there is plenty of public art on view outside. This is the Tate's latest by Ugo Rondinone. Like The Guardian , I'm not so sure about this one, but that's one of the stre...

The  Eryngium leapt over the central terrace wall into the lawn many moons ago. NAH's threat to 'mow the meadow'*, as he calls the wild and woolly lawn , prompted me to cut back the emerging flower heads to make his job a little easier. Instead of composting them as I usually do, I decided they would make an interesting green bouquet for the house. It looks like they last quite well in the vase, a week at least. Green allium seed heads made a long lasting bouquet in my Flowers for Mum project last year. It meant she had flowers (in the widest sense) in her room whilst I was on holiday. I'm definitely warming to the green bouquet concept. I rather like the effect of these architectural stems (and one of the new filters on my editing software), what do you think? Original photo for comparison * = of course if it was a real meadow, he could leave it until much later in the year 😉

Our final #mygardenrightnow is a chance to show off the festive edition of your garden and to seek out any hope during the darkest time of the year. You may be surprised how much life you find! That's the beauty of this meme; it gives us a chance to go out and really look at at what we have out there. Whether my autumn leaves are still yellow, or have started their transformation into a dark, rich mulch remains to be seen... All you need to do is take one photo of yourself in the garden - more if you want - and post it on your blog or favourite social media. Don't worry if your garden is looking bare or a mess, we want to see real gardeners and gardens! Christmas decorations or green shoots pushing their way through the soil, plus any floral or winter structure you want to show off are especially welcome. Your favourite coffee cups/tea mugs and winter attire will be fun additions. Use the hashtag #mygardenrightnow so we can find you and come a-visiting. The fun start...

I was struck by the quotation I found for Friday's Thresholds post, and thought it worthy of a repeat for today's Muse Day . What a prescient notion in Fox Talbot's words. This time I've superimposed it on a photo I took at 2014's Illuminating Lacock Abbey exhibition. The projected image is another of Fox Talbot's and a similar one was on display in Thresholds . It was a spine tingling feeling to 'hold' this image in my hand via the magic of Virtual Reality. I wonder what's next?

I've been to another world! It's probably the closest I'll ever get to time travel... ...Thresholds is the brainchild of artist Mat Collishaw who's recreated the world's first public exhibition of photographs in Virtual Reality (VR). Lacock Abbey is a fitting venue seeing it's where the creator of those images - Fox Talbot - lived and many of the photographs he exhibited in 1839 were of the Abbey or plants in his garden. Here you can see me all kitted up with battery back pack, wired for sound via the headphones, and peering into the blue screen of the VR headset. National Trust volunteer Bill is ready to guide me into the room where the action takes place... to take me over the threshold as it were. Artist Mat Collishaw poses in the room where the VR magic happens. Before you get to this point you're guided up a slope and just as you enter the room, the screen suddenly changes from blue to another world. The room's layout is synchronised w...

Only the second recorded sighting of a hummingbird hawk moth in Chippenham this year - exciting! Phew how marvellous that was! Many thanks for all your contributions to #mygardenrightnow last weekend ; we had over 400 posts, around 250 contributors and over 500 photos shared across blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Contributors came from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Italy, France and Ireland. As usual there was tons of variety in your posts and I'm sneakily pleased about the number of washing lines included in the real gardens you shared. We spotted loads of garden wildlife too thanks to your posts; with our first sighting of hares and my excitement at finding a hummingbird hawk moth in my garden amongst the highlights. We also had our first barbecue - at last. I declare dahlias and tomatoes as the most popular flower and vegetable featured, though onions and roses came close. Here's a summary collage of some of the photos I ...

Early doors in my PJs... I look at raindrops while Jess and Skimble yell 'Oi, where's my breakfast!' It's quite a different day to yesterday's warm sunshine, yet the #mygardenrightnow weekend's going strong and I still have stuff to share from my garden. One of the things I love about blogging projects is they can take you in quite unexpected directions. I contacted Bren on Friday - one of the US bloggers I met at this year's Fling - to see if it was OK if I posted about #mygardenrightnow on her #gardenchat Facebook Page . We ended up having an enthusiastic video chat instead (my first!) with Bren actually in her garden at the time, then she put together the video below of our conversation, illustrated with lots of photos from previous editions of #mygardenrightnow. It sums up perfectly how we all come together for a 'virtual peep over the fence' - thanks to Karen for that neat summary :) If the embedded video doesn't work, try th...

It's the first weekend of September and time for the autumn edition of #mygardenrightnow ! We had a fantastic response in March and June, and I look forward to seeing how your garden's growing this weekend. I'm expecting to see lots of late season colour and harvests from the plot, plus plenty of projects and garden tasks on the go. I wonder if we'll have clear winners in the flower and crop photos this time? Mr Linky is lined up below for your blog  only contributions, followed by some FAQs for those of you who are new to #mygardenrightnow.  I'll also scout for your hashtagged submissions on Twitter , Facebook and Instagram to promote your posts. Facebook entries can be a little tricky to find sometimes, so do please give me a nudge via my Facebook Page to help find them if this is where you choose to respond (NB a tip from my friend Bren in Ohio - make sure you set your post to Public, so we can find it). A note for Mr Linky , please submit th...

Part of the Umbrella Street installation at Southgate Shopping Centre in Bath  

Just to prove I really was there - a lovely photo of Hillwood with me for scale taken by my friend  Barbara   It's taken me a while to get round to writing about the wonders of this year's Garden Bloggers' Fling , primarily because I don't have photos for most of it. It means lots of the coverage I'd planned from all but the last day won't be blogged, or I'll use post-Fling photos instead. I got home from a wonderful holiday all fired up to tell you all about it, loaded up my SD Cards in readiness... then found all my photos from the first 5 days of our holiday were missing. I know they were there originally because I showed some of them to NAH, but even his prowess with SD recovery programs failed to find even a ghost of an original photo. This is what I think happened... On Fling Day 2 I arrived at our first garden ( this wonderful one , full of neat little touches and that bench in Pam's blog post was a shoe-in for a Friday Bench   on'...

Sometimes even the most familiar things in life can offer a surprise which sets you off in a completely different direction. This is exactly what happened to me at Lacock Abbey recently - the garden I visit the most - in the form of Nettie Edwards, pictured above. She was based in the botanic garden showing her work with anthotypes , a technique which uses plants as the light sensitive material to produce a photographic print. The technique itself is well over a century old, and until Nettie's demonstration I hadn't realised it's easy to do at home. The studio on the day I did pop by - Twitter screen grab courtesy of Nettie Edwards All that's needed is some suitable plant material, a means to extract its juices, a paper and frame for printing, a positive image for reproduction, a source of light, and plenty of time. The combination of two of my favourite things - photography and gardens - got me fired up and itching to get started. Nettie's enthusiasm f...