Easter hellebore

I haven't blogged much in ages, but thought why not upload a couple of pics now that I was trying to get a few photos of my new hellebore.

I love hellebores, but it's more about admiring them in photos and flower shops than actually buying any as they're a bit pricey and I'm a bit broke. But this friday I went shopping and spotted some hellebores. The gorgeous purple and double ones were too expensive for me, but then my sis spotted a shelf with smaller hellebores that were on offer. Half price off, I think. So of cause I had to get one.

This is the one I really wanted but thought was beyond my price range at 200 SEK (approx. 17 GBP/22 EUR/24 USD). It was one of the big ones, perhaps three or four times the height of the one I bought. And a gorgeous, gorgeous colour.


So far the one I did get is indoors, but I'll have to figure out a good place to plant it outdoors. Not sure where to put it. Don't think they'll end up near our other hellebores, which look like this. Don't want those colours together. Maybe there's place somewhere near some of the snowdrops – which, like the crocus, is really spreading out on the lawns nowadays – so they'll create some sort of spring flower corner. Maybe. We'll have to see.

Anyway, as you can see below I got an assistant when taking the photos. It's one of the kittens we accidentally got last summer. A little cutie, don't you think? I find it hard to get good pics of hellebores, but a little cat improves any photo.

For these photos – taken in poor light as heavy rain clouds started to cover the sky – I covered the plastic flower pot it came in with pieces of bark clad in moss that I took from some old logs lying behind the barn. Fastened them with a matching piece of embroidery floss.


One of the reasons for taking the photo was to test putting something on my relatively new Instragram account. Have thought about trying it out ever since getting a modern phone. Something easier than blogging, just putting a pic up every now and then, I thought, something to act as as an alternative to my blog for those who like it when I'm not in the mood to do proper blog posts. But so far it hasn't been able to really pull me in. A small phone that's slightly too old to be really useful for the purpose and my being a newbie with little time to learn has hampered me. (Also, I suck at taking photos with the phone. The camera in it is good, the photographer isn't.) I'm trying to keep it bilingual, with swedish as the "first language".

It's not very interesting right now, but if you're curious or want to see more pics for me, why not check it out?

Ännu en bild på min #julros (nu utan katt). Ser lite mer av den klädda krukan. Mossan och barken den sitter på tog jag från en bunke med gammalt bränne som vi har liggande. Bröt loss några lagom stora bitar och knöt fast med grönt brodergarn runt plastkrukan. Ett enkelt #pyssel för finare foto. Moss clad pot with #hellebore. #helleborus #garden #trädgård

Ett foto publicerat av maneki (@manekibeader) Mar 27, 2016 kl. 11:15 PDT

I'm so note comfortable with hashtags. Too many? Too few? Too generic? Too useless? Too unnecessary? I've got much to learn...

~*~

Oh, now that I'm doing a blog post I must of cause not forget to end this post by wishing you a

Happy Easter!

.
Glad påsk!

Hope you're lucky enough to relax and enjoy some sunshine, budding flowers, a gentle spring breeze, birdsong and everything else one wish this season to bring.

First snowdrops of the year

The other day the weather turned colder again after weeks of temperatures above zero, turning rain and heavy grey skies into white clouds, sunshine and blue sky. It's cold, but the sun is bright: the cats relly enjoyed sunbathing on the porch around noon. But, yes, still cold. There was frost here and there on the ground still in the afternoon, and not just in the northside shadows. And today was the day I got the urge to check the snowdrops. Was meaning to do it yesterday as I felt they'd probably budded, but never got around to it before dark. With the sun setting around 5 PM, there aren't yet many hours of sunlight when you oversleep... But today I remembered to have a look and I was right: the first snowdrops are beginning to bloom.

As I'm done it for several  years, of cause I had to keep up with the snowdrop blog tradition even if I'm still not back blogging really. The post from previous years can be found here.

Enjoy!

First snowdrop buds

I'm still not back blogging for various reasons (most lately because I got ill for a week), but I can't give up on my blog traditions, such as noting when the snowdrops pop up in the garden every winter/spring. If you want to compare with previous years, you can find all snowdrop posts here.

I spent much of january bemoaning the lack of a white winter, mostly because otherwise the winters here are wet, chilly, foggy and very dark. Miserable to put it plainly. But then we got a little snow and these last couple of weeks it's even stayed instead of melting away as fast as it's come.

The other day, after recovering from a week in bed, I started thinking about the snowdrops that surely must have started to pierce through the soil under snow at that point. And so last night, it started to really thaw again. One of the first things I did this windy morning was therefore to check out the snowdrops and sure enough, they've started to bud!

Welcome, fair May!

Photo (of the first sunset of May) should be viewed while playing the audio below.

Happy Walpurgis!

It's Walpurgis Night, Valborgsmässoafton (aka Siste April), today and so I thought I must make a little blog post. I rarely visit any bonfires or celebrate the arrival of spring in any particular way other than just enjoying the flowers in the garden and in nature, perhaps reflecting on in now really being spring and that summer is just around the corner (thanks to the warm easter weather, meteorologists have already declared it meteorological summer down here but that is far from "real" summer).

To illustrate the beauty of spring, I chose to go with the cherry blossom this time.

~*~

Edited because I had to add a little bonfire and music to really set the mood. :-)

Meowy Monday: the wood anemone edition

Lately, I've mostly focused on all the colourful flowers that's popping up in the garden: daffodils, forsythia, tulips, pasque flower, violets (they're speading real good!), daisies, dandelions, the yellow flowers on the bush that I don't know the name of, annual honesty, bird cherry, cherry blossom etc. But last week I noticed just how full of wood anemones the hill was this year and decided I had to get some more pics before they started wilted. This time Julle and Knatti acompanied me on the walk so I'm making the pics into a Meowy Monday post (haven't had many of them lately...).

I'm just going to put up the pics in the order they were taken as it's getting late here. Meaning the kitties will be mixed with pics of flowers only.

I said initially that it was wood anemones, but to be fair the wood sorrel is in bloom now too and it helped filling in the carpet of white blossom. So why not end with a close-up of a sweet little oxalis flower?

Red tulips

Just a little pic of red tulips as I don't have time to post the pics I hoped to be ready to post today...

The tulips came with the warm weather this weekend. Now they're in full bloom and it's a sunny summer's day outside.

Ok... a pic of one of the yellow ones too.

Happy Easter!

It's easter again and I thought I'd show a few påskris pics. They're not great, but ironically this is something my sis put together some weeks ago and today we don't have a decorated påskris as the plum blossom wilted and this one was thrown out. So I don't have anything else to photograph.

The sparse decoration, notably lacking feathers, is due to her just putting up the new egg decorations she bought the day before. And, really, I'm not sure it was ever intended as a påskris, she just put the eggs there to see what they looked like. But the unorthodox choice of branches did make a very pretty påskris while it lasted, the blossom made it feel like the spring warmth was already here (especially when it bloomed during some pretty chilly, grey and rainy days).

Normally we use hazel branches or perhaps a few twigs of birch, but since the storm knocked down some of the trees my sis has spent the spring dragging in random branches and twigs to save them when the trees and bushes had to be cut down and disposed of.

Hope you're all having a lovely holiday!