Fantastic. Yes I love all those English Cottage garden flowers. I get so nostalgic.

A swan in the Ornamental Lake, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. The 'green' in the water is duckweed, not algae. The swan was totally unconcerned by my presence in the water nearby and come up to investigate.

Beautiful pic, Micke. They are a lovely bird.

I can't see the butterfly, Chav .. do we get a hint??

Nice pressie, Ren! I got a drawing and a couple of rocks ...

Having just made my second blog attempt (abbreviated) to describe Tuesday's journey through hell (the computer blew up while writing it) I've used the static road to make some recordings of it. This is the A12, a major road which has never been busy all my life which was gridlocked like this for 10 miles. This is just before you get to Brentwood going under the M25. I use the bridges to make sure I can work out where they'd been taken.

My new planter made out of a 250 year old tree (from the stump area). The tree died of about 10 years ago. My husband cut it down so no dead branches would fall on the kids.
It has been out in the edge of the field ever since. I told my husband I wanted a fallen tree to make a planter out of it. Well on Mother's Day he showed me my new planter. He carved out the center and placed dirt in it. Now planted and ready to grow!




Ren: I LOVE your Mother's Day present too!

Chavs: I need a hint too!

Christine: I love the foxglove! Always a favorite.

Mike: The duckweed surrounding the black swan just sets it off. Beautiful!

Wow, that swan!


Hint for the butterfly: it's on the right-hand side. Our right.

The Flame of the Forest tree opposite our house makes me gasp every year

Jiminy Cricket! That's a wonderful capture Mother Goose!

Mike: love the one of Twiggy. You can almost see her nose "twitching" in that pic.

David: Your one of Seale Church is now officially my favourite of yours. "Artist's eye" and all. You seriously should get that one enlarged, printed and framed : )

Copago: Super fly! Looks like a jewel made of polished pewter!

Christina: here's your butterfly : ) ... (enjoyed the "puzzle" - thanks!)

(My butterfly). Well done, Jake.

Christina is busy taking more poppy pictures - I believe a promise of such was implied.

It was indeed, but as yet none of the others are out. Couple are starting to split I noticed today so sometime in the next couple of days more poppy pictures will appear.

We've got a tropical butterfly gardens near us, so while we're waiting for the poppies to open, here's a butterfly instead.

This is the flavour of the month (since around 1990) for new house designs. This old village was built in Great Notley in Essex in 1999.

sorry Chavs, I've been confused about a LOT of things lately, sigh.

Precious, caught in the act of sharpening her non-existant front claws on some postcard albums. Doesn't the look just say "Who me?"

Liz, there's almost an apologetic look on Precious' face - of course that means 'sorry I've been caught', not 'sorry I've been naughty'! Love this photo and the recent contributions to our entomology collection!

Some lilies from last year

Stunning!

Thanks Chavs

I wish my neighbours would grow something as fabulous as that Ren!

Christina - what can I say that the photo doesn't speak for itself?? oh my. Lovely flutterby too.

My main computer had a heart attack 2 days ago. I'm hoping it's just a fan or a motherboard as I have a LOT of photos that I'd never saved to cd since the player hasn't worked in over a year. Oh well, guess I can always start over. The best pix are in the human memory banks anyway, so they say.

The weather hasn't been condusive to taking pictures lately (at least not when I'm OFF work lol), but here's some "Martha Washingtons" planted in a bench hubby built out of barnwood from my grampa's farmstead. I suppose I should have taken it from a different angle to show off the bench, but... meh LOL

Lovely, the wood is gorgeous. I am debating "Wood"for the next two week theme.

Today I went to Overton which is a few miles past Basingstoke

That's lovely satguru. Is there anything better than an English country road in full flower?

Thanks Christina, many more to follow, here's a picture postcard view in North Waltham

More thatched cottages near the other ones

Those are both lovely photos. Real picture poscard English village. Time could pretty much have stood till there.