Pre-Easter Weekend

 

So this weekend I've been tackling my own garden before we get down to laying turf in Julia and James's garden next weekend (over the Easter weekend). This is the front garden all mowed and edged just before the rain came in for the whole afternoon - why are my days off wet and my work days nice and sunny??

And this is the back garden mowed and edged on Saturday morning before the rain & hail kicked in and the bird house acorn popped up on the garage wall complete with fake bird because trying to manage it at a height of 2m isn't going to work for me!

So here are some images of said hail, boy did it come down! Like bobbly snow! So much so it collected outside the backdoor 🥶

And because next weekend is potentially going to be busy I thought I would put up the Easter decs in the porch today!

And it's been productive on the gardening level as Dad came by and managed to dig out the two fuchsias that I've been trying to kill off because I'm fed up with them after all these years, too big for where they are growing and prone to the fuchsia gall mite which leaves them looking awful. So now the ground is clear for me to plant some ornamental grasses which I bought a few weeks ago, Festuca Intense Blue! Should be good.

More Still Life Weather!

 

So in preparation for another wet Off Friday I froze some water in a tub and placed this pink gerbera on top and then added a little more water and popped it back in the freezer over Thursday night into Friday.

Setup in the studio with the 77D fitted with the 60mm macro lens on the tripod legs and had a good session as the ice melted. On occasion adding the smallest extension tube to the mix.

It whiled away most of the morning and then played in the afternoon with this daisy type flower:

This was sitting in a small bud vase with my tinfoil covered box behind it for a rather unusual backdrop.

All in all a good camera day :-)

Still Life Weather!

 

So as this weekend, including my Off Friday, has been mostly wet weather I took the opportunity for some still life photography to keep me from getting too bored. Using my lightbox and various props I spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon taking photos. Including playing with some old sweet film wrappers in front of the built-in flash...

This is one such example using a piece of red film - naturally! Really like the effect and cheap as chips too although now the Quality Street brand from whence these pieces of film came have moved to recyclable wrappers so glad I saved as many colours as I could whilst they were still available. This set of old bracelet beads were shot on an old box covered in scrunched up tinfoil which makes for a quite interesting background. All in all it whiled away time on a day where going outside was out of the question.

Saturday saw me and Julia shopping up at Bluewater, mainly for New Mum items for James's sister who is about to have twins!! So lots of useful but perhaps less exciting toiletries for her and the new bubbas when they arrive next week (via a C-Section) and some time saving bits for her like dry shampoo and hairclips because new mums don't have time to fuss about washing their hair! Julia and James are excited to become Auntie & Uncle - especially Julia as she has no siblings and sees James's brothers and sister as her own.

Sunday has been brighter weather for once, been outside briefly in the garden but still too early to do much beyond a little tidying up and trying to hopefully kill off a couple of old fuchsias that I'm looking to replace with alternative plants because they are rife with that fuchsia gall mite. Hoping that if I can kill them off then digging them out will be less of a challenge. Fingers crossed ;-)