Last night’s moon
Silent Sunday
14 Replies
Monthly Archives: February 2021
Six on Saturday – 27th February 2021
We have just had a lovely spring day. Crocuses are at their best.
Crocus
2. I love these delicate ones too.
Crocus
3. Hellebores are also flowering nicely.
Hellebores
4. It is always nice to get free plants. These foxgloves self-germinate in the polytunnel.
5. Looking forward to these lettuce that over-wintered in the greenhouse and are bulking up nicely.
Lettuce
6. And finally this week , germinating lettuce seed!!! Yes spring is here!
Lettuce seddings
Thank you to The Propagator for hosting Six on Saturday
S is for Spawn
Frog spawn – there is a lot of it in the garden pond.
They are over hundred frogs in the pond at the moment and they will start dispersing again soon. During the year, we come across them regularly in the vegetable garden, and in the long grass of the meadows.
It is wonderful to see them all together in the pond though, and they do make a lovely gentle croaking noise. The spawn will take anything from 10-21 days to hatch into tadpoles (it depends on the temperature). The tadpoles will take a further 14 weeks to grow into mini frogs. Of course many of them will become food for newts, dragonfly larva and other predators including themselves.
Inspired by this week’s Lens artist photo challenge -Subjects Starting with Letter S
Froggy Sunday
Frog and spawn
Six on Saturday – Spring is coming
One of the things that makes me really happy is the coming of spring.
A sure sign of spring is the arrival of frogs in the garden pond. They usually arrive around St Valentine’s Day and sure enough that is when the first ones appeared. Yesterday’s count was about 100!
Frogs
At this point we also have the first spawn.
Frog spawn
Thirdly this week are the crocuses. Despite all the rain they are coming through.
Crocus
Flowers are just such bundles of joy. Here mini daffodils also coming out.
Daffodils
Even the first leaves are emerging – here some native honeysuckle and a great tit. The bird song is another sure sign of spring.
Great tit and leaves of honey suckle climbing through trees
It is very wet though. We have had constant rain and everything is muddy. Garden jobs are well behind as it is just to wet too work the soil.
Muddy path and chicken
Thanks to The Propagator for hosting Six on Saturday and Sheetal for hosting last weeks lens artist challenge – Glimpse into your world.
Silent Sunday – Saint Valentine’s Day
Lens-Artists Challenge #134 – From Forgettable to Favourite
Marsh marigold and buttercups are so bright they can be hard to photograph – but playing around with “shadow” effect can give some nice results. I also cropped the second image.
Before 
After
Before 
After
Inspired by Lens-artists challenge 134 From forgettable to favorite
Silent Sunday – Hazel catkins
Six on Saturday, 5th February 2021
We have snow forecast for the end of the week, but it may not get this far west. Meanwhile spring continues to show her face.
1. Crocus, the yellow ones always bring a little bit of spring sunshine even on a grey day.
2. Willow catkins. This one is Salix x rubra I think. Always the first to show. And in recent years it seems to be coming out earlier than ever. I like the willows to be of use to emerging queen bumblebees – but this one is too early now.
3. Daffodil. Just two blooms so far. But more on the way.
4. Robin friend has already teamed up with a mate, but still comes for meal worms. We have also discovered that it likes raisins which we had left out for the blackbirds.
5. The bird feeders remain busy.
6. We have been doing quite a bit of apple and pear tree pruning. In some circumstances being quite extreme. Hoping for more fruit this year.
Thank you to The Propagator for hosting Six on Saturday.
Lens-Artists Challenge #133 – My Photography Journey
As far as I remember my first camera was given to me by my uncle. It was a small Instamatic. I think this may be a photo from it. It was in an album from my childhood. I may have been about 10. In those days of print film we did not take too many photos. I have some photos of my family still and this one of my pet rabbit.
At some point in my teens my parents bought my sister and I an Olympus OM 10, I think, which I think we shared for a while but then at some point I got my own. This camera lasted me for years. In fact, I still have it. At first we used print film, but later moved to 35mm slides. I never took too many photos as not like today you had to pay to get everything developed. And sometimes you were disappointed with the results.
Our first digital camera was a Fujifilm Finepix F810 which my husband and I shared for at least 6 years. It served us well for number of years. But one wet day ended up falling from my then very young son’s hands and breaking. It was a great little camera and I took a lot of pictures of the children with it when they were younger, as well as photographs of our trips.
In 2011, a search on the internet led me to a review of an Olympus Pen EPL1. I liked the look of it and the review was good, it was a good price so I bought it. A few years later I upgraded to a newer version (EPL8) after the lens failed. I have since added a 50-140mm lens. I rarely go anywhere without it.
Murtagh's Meadow 