May 14 2011

More Flowers today

My Cotoneaster has now fully opened.

May 11 2011

Hostas and flowers

Stephen’s collection of hostas were just beautiful today and I managed to get a few pics of them and other flowers in his garden. Here’s a selection. Anyone know the name of the blue one? It’s a native bog plant.

May 10 2011

Satsuki Guessing Game

Last year I bought this Satsuki Azalea on the cheap. I hadn’t got one and was wanting to add a splash of colour to the bench. It had been pruned hard and most of what you see here is new growth grown after I got it. It had only been fed with ‘teabags’ for the last 8 years and hadn’t been repotted in that time.

I fed it heavily from last Summer and repotted it this Spring. The one thing I didn’t know and have been guessing at is, what colour and size the flowers are. Here are the first signs of flowering. They look big, too be expected, and there appears to be a few different colours. The tree has a very long way to go before it looks presentable, but isn’t that part of the fun.

May 10 2011

Potent Flowers

Working on my trees yesterday, even on a windy afternoon, I kept getting wiffs of a potent smell. At first I thought it was the chicken pellets but the smell was truly heady and overpowering. Looking up I spotted that the Rowan tree I grew from seed was in full flower and was the source of the smell.

May 9 2011

Flowering Cotoneaster

This Cotoneaster has been in my collection since I dug it out of a garden in 1995. It’s nothing special really and I’m not overly happy with the shape of it. I even consider removing all branches and starting again. What I do like about it is the flowers and the deadwood I’ve created.

This was it back in a garden in 1995.

And here in 1996.

and again in 1998. Shortly after this photo a root died causing a narrowing of the live vein and the death of a few lower branches.

May 8 2011

Accents

A few more. They still need to fill out but they are starting to look the part.

Wild Strawberry

May 4 2011

May Flowers…

…and leaves.

At Roy’s today I also managed to get a few close up photos on a few of his trees.

The Hawthorn Flowers, also known here as the May Flower, are just beautiful.

A few older flowers that have lost their Pink!

Deshojo Leaves.

Golden Larch

Spindle Flower.

Pretty?

May 3 2011

Camera Addict

I know this is meant to be a Bonsai diary but I just can’t help playing around with my camera.(Nikon D5000). Here are a few tree and plant shots taken over the last few days.

Apr 28 2011

Sea Thrift and Aquilegia

A few more accents flowering today. I was at the rocky north coast last Summer and I noticed a few little Sea Thrifts and other bits and bobs growing among the rocks. This one was growing in a tiny crevice and was easy to pop out into into a pot on my return home.

This is a dwarf variety of Aquilegia. This is actually the tallest I have ever seen it flower!! Usually only a few inches tall.

Apr 24 2011

Easter Walk in the Woods

My family and I went for our traditional egg throwing/rolling session in the local woods followed by a bit of a walk. The bluebells are just reaching their peak flowering and it was beautiful to see the blue carpet wherever you looked.

It’s mostly a Beech and Hazel wood and many of the Beech are well into the growing season.

This is the battle ground for the egg rolling where I regained the winners title this year 🙂

Tree roots criss cross all the paths and the ground actually feels and sounds hollow under foot in many places.

Flowers can be seen everywhere. Here’s our native Bluebell, not the Spanish one that seems to be taking over!!

Some of the Yellow Gorse/Whinbush flowers. The air was heady with the scent of coconut from these stunning flowers. Pity they are too problematic for bonsai.

Some of the Blackthorn were still holding onto their flowers.

One of my favourite photos of the day, an old Beech ringed with a patch of Bluebells. New Beech seedling can also be seen reaching for the light before the parents shade them out.