Macro Monday #65

(click to enlarge to full size)

Tulbaghia simmleri / Sweet garlic

garden photography: so sweet

June is all about ‘the essence of summer’

(This month I want to see what summer means to you. Still focussing on the garden or parkland let your photographs tell me your story of summer-time wherever in the world you live. )

My last summer essence is another scented flower. The sweet-pea (Lathyrus odoratus). Not only does this lovely annual climber come in jewel box colours and delightful fragrances, it also holds lots of childhood memories for me as my dad used to grow them on cane wigwams in the back garden and he used to let me pick posies for my mother.

I love to try and grow them myself, but this year’s lot went in a little late so I’m not expecting any flowers any time soon!

If you would like to join in with Garden Photography then please take a look at my Garden Photography Page. No complicated rules 🙂

• Create your own post and title it June: The Essence of Summer
• Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
• Add the tag “GardenChallenge” so everyone can find the posts easily in the WP Reader
• Get your post in by the end of the month, as the new theme comes out on the first Sunday in July.
• Please visit the sites in the comments to see what others are posting.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their essence of summer with me, it has, as always, been a delight to visit gardens and flowers from around the world. Next month I am looking for something from the edible garden – an allotment, herb gardens, a tomato plant, a rice terrace in China, a field of corn; you decide.

garden photography: orange peel

Welcome to the first month of the Garden Photo Challenge. This challenge is designed to challenge ourselves with the type of photos we take in and around a garden, to focus on things we might not notice, to consider different angles and to take time to frame and compose an image so that every photo is one you will want to keep. Many of the monthly themes are quite broad, leaving the subject up to you, the photographer. I may offer some suggestions, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow them. I think that digital photography has made me lazy, I click at everything and then end up with hundreds of photos that never see the light of day again. I mean who really needs fifty shots of the same leaf? No, this year I intend to slow down, take less, but create more and I hope that some of you will join me. You can use images from the archives (I have with some of mine for January), but if possible I will try to take new ones as the year progresses, if only to improve my techniques. Anyway, enough waffle, let’s get on with the challenge…

Crinum x powellii / Swamp Lily

Crinums have big funnel-shaped blooms in clusters of up to 10 flowers festooning flower stalks up to 60cm tall. They have an incredibly sweet scent and a long blooming period.

Beautiful Swamp Lily

Chocolate Cosmos

Cosmos atrosanguineus derives its Latin name  from its colour of dried blood – but the plant’s popular name, chocolate cosmos,  comes from its incredible chocolate fragrance

“Chocolate Velvet” Click image to enlarge

Another lovely fragrant flower in my favourite colour, it really does smell of chocolate… and vanilla! I rescued three of these plants from the market this summer when they were in a pretty dire condition (only cost me £1 each). Re-potted and given a ‘Chelsea crop’ they have flourished and rewarded me with many lovely blooms. Although not hardy so they won’t survive the winter here, I think I have had my money’s worth from them this year 🙂

Butterfly Lavender

Lavandula stoechas subsp. pedunculata ‘Papillon’
French or Papillon/Butterfly Lavender has lovely, big flowers with little tufts of purple bracts at the top of the ears.

Rose Portrait: Commandant Beaurepaire

An old rose (Bourbons) with large double, fragrant light-pink flowers striped and flecked with deep-pink, purple and scarlet.

This Bourbon rose is named for Nicholas Joseph Beaurepaire, a retired colonel in the French army who, after the Revolution and on the invasion of France by Prussia and Austria, was called to defend the town of Verdun with a few hundred untrained conscripts against 60,000 Prussians. Refusing all calls to surrender, even from the town council and his own officers, the Commandant declared “I prefer death to life under despots” and promptly shot himself.

Verdun surrendered, but Beaurepaire became a national hero. This glorious striped rose was dedicated to him in 1874 after another war with Prussia left France in need of her heroes.

Rose Portrait: Complicata

This is one of the finest single roses. It is probably a hybrid of a Gallica Rose and R. canina, although it is very much a wild rose in character. R. ‘Complicata’ bears large, single flowers, about five inches across, of brilliant pure rose-pink, paling to white at the centre.

Rose Portrait: Camayeux / Camaieux

A fascinating variety; white flowers, heavily striped and splashed with crimson. The stripes fade at first to magenta and then to lilac-grey. It is an Old Rose with a typical old rose fragrance.

Rose Portrait: Sophy’s Rose

Today (July 1st) marks the start of a month of roses from me. Most are images from my collections, but I do aim to get out there and shoot some more, weather permitting, especially since I appear to be short of red roses! I hope you enjoy them all.

Sophy’s Rose

bred by David Austin this English rose has a light tea fragrance and can be used as a hedging. It has a delightful deep pink or light red colouring.