sweet pea

Five Minutes with Sweet-Peas

/ Heyjude / 24 Comments

DesleyJane – a lovely arty scientist now living in Melbourne – is also a wonderful photographer and a huge macro fan. She has a new weekly challenge called “regularrandom“ for anyone to join in with which involves spending 5 minutes with the subject matter.

Choose a scene or an object and keep fixed on that object, and shoot for just five minutes.   You can move around the object or scene but try not to interfere with it. See what happens in that five minutes, what changes, how the light changes, what comes into the frame or leaves the frame, or what other parts of the object you can focus on or use to your advantage.

This year I had a head start with my sweet-peas, but not all the seeds I planted germinated so I wasn’t expecting as many flowers as last year. This is the first tiny bunch I picked in late June. Beautiful rich jewel-like colours and a pure white. All smelling absolutely gorgeous.

On a brief visit back home last weekend I picked dozens of the blooms, but didn’t have time to photograph them. I only hope by the time I get home again there will still be some left!

All photos were taken using my Olympus OM-D E-10 camera  and 40-150mm lens, hand-held.

If you would like to join in then please visit DJ’s site where you will find more information and ideas about the challenge.

garden photography: so sweet

/ Heyjude / 29 Comments

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.

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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!

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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.