miss marie's miscellany

Anemone love

I planted some pots with anemone bulbs in the spring and they've been blooming over the last 3-4 weeks. The flowers have been gorgeous shades of blue, pink and red so far, but this week this little beauty appeared. Isn't it lovely?! 

I'm very taken with it

It's all curled up after a rain shower above, and below, open to reveal the scarlet markings on the creamy white petals

When I leave the house, I stop to admire it- it'll soon be gone, like all flowers, so I'm enjoying it while I can!

Delightful!

July collages

It's been a lovely month, holidays, flowers galore in the garden, happy times spent with people dear to me. So many photos too; I counted them up, 650 photos, phew! So after much deliberation, here's the best of my July.

Yorkshire days 2

A visit to RHS Harlow Carr near Harrogate. I think I'll let the pictures do the talking. 

Well worth a visit if you are in the vicinity!

Just arrived!

Look what arrived today! (Delivered by a handsome young gentleman too!)

A new sewing machine.

Sadly my old one has died after much faithful use, so I decided to get myself up to date and buy one with a few more modern features. It literally is just out of the box so nothing to show yet; I'm pouring over the manual to see how it all works, there's so much to take in! But I'm planning to put it to good use as soon as I can manage; I have some hems to turn up and tonight would be a good time to do that due to impending holidays!  Over the coming weeks some mending, dressmaking and soft furnishing projects are all distinct possibilities. And hopefully good for blog postings too!

A new arrival in the garden too, this unusual rose 'Ferdinand Pichard'; my neighbour said it looked like someone had been in the garden with a paintbrush and pink paint! 

Bright and beautiful

Lovely summer colours today. The weather has been wonderful this week, perfect summer climes....let's cross fingers that it will continue like this for a while. I like feeling the sun warming my bones!  It's doing the garden too

Red anemone.......I planted a pot of these so I hope for more red and blue ones soon

This wildflower is such a vivid shade of orange, like  glowing embers

This lovely delphinium is coming into its own this week

I wish you could bottle that sunshine feeling!

This week's flowers

Some garden lovelies today.

Achillea 'Salmon Beauty'...... isn't it pretty close-up?!

These poppy heads waiting to open

And two lovely roses

This lovely white one is a beautiful climbing rose; unfortunately, no-smell blogging prevents me from letting you inhale the gorgeous scent of the flower, it's heavenly!

And this pretty pink one has just peeped out in the front garden

Summer flowers

Lots of summery sunny flowers today. The garden is full of colour at the moment.

Hope they make you smile and brighten your day.

Columbine

I love these aqualegias or columbines. No planting or sowing on my part , they are wildflowers which grow every year bringing some lovely colour to the garden, and I love seeing where they'll appear.

purple 

 white 

pink

and this beautiful red one which I haven't seen in the garden before

It's a lovely sunny day here. Whatever the weather, I hope you have a great weekend.

Busy bee

I've been busy for the last few days, so not much time for posting. In between real money-paying work, I've been toiling away in the garden, getting the grass cut and doing lots of  weeding. A bit of drama.......yesterday afternoon whilst gardening, I was stung on my forearm by a bee and had quite a bad delayed reaction to it. I didn't think anything of it at the time, made sure the sting was gone and cleaned it up. But I had a concert last night and by the end of it my arm was much more sore and swollen (perhaps holding one's arm up in a cello playing position for several hours wasn't helpful? Unavoidable though!)

Yuk! The white pasty flesh doesn't make it look any better. Note to self; a light fake tan might not go amiss! Anyway, medicine has been taken and ice-packs and lotions applied and I'm well on the mend now, thankfully. But do watch out for those bees! 

On a more positive note, I have managed some crocheting, a new project. I bought some new wool and together with a few bits from my stash, decided on this colour scheme.

And I sat for a while this morning making these

Which will turn into something cushiony for the bedroom, I think.

And I had to show my new shoes.....

They do seem to tone in with my crochet very well. I've had my eye on these for a while, and now the weather is more summery, I feel I can justify the purchase!

And just to keep the purple harmony going, here's a lovely rhododendron from the garden...... looking good!

Wishing you a happy weekend! 

Gnome and Garden

Lots of lovely colour everywhere in the garden this week.

Bluebells are such a gorgeous blue.

This geum is so bright and sunny

And this Dicentra spectabilis with its heart-shaped flowers is lovely, I'd forgotten the stems are deep pink too.

From my garden to something a bit posher.....I'm looking forward to seeing the Chelsea Flower Show programmes on BBC1 & 2. I love seeing the plants and flowers, new varieties and old favourites....and all the show gardens. Interesting to see what the designers come up with, especially in this time of recession. I see from reading the Guardian that all tickets are sold out for the entire week, the RHS have banned one of the exhibitors from having their lucky garden gnome in their display, but strangely they have allowed a garden made entirely of plasticine to be shown.