English fog in the countryside lends a lovely softness to a scene, such as this one, which was on a walk near the river close to Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
I hope everyone’s Monday has some gentleness to it. This is being posted from my blog, so feel free to visit from the link if you want to see more of my photographs and stories.
For a Sunday flower photo I am going back to the middle of summer, early August actually, to a time when there were Monarch and other butterflies flitting everywhere in our garden on our flowers, and particularly on the two butterfly bushes (buddleia) we planted for them. I thought of this photo (perhaps some have seen it already) as I was removing the dead flowers. Now the butterflies have mostly all gone and so we must wait for their return next summer. However I have the memory of their bright colours and beauty to sustain me through the winter months ahead. And so I want to share this memory and the hope for another spring and another summer to give us a smile as we transition into the fall this week. Have a lovely day everyone! I send a warm hug out to all.
The Flower a Day Gallery shows all flowers in the galleryo. Each day a new photo will be added. There are now 17 to view. Click or tap to view full size.
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There is a wonderful children’s garden in the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, where I discovered that I am still a child as I enjoyed it just as much as any of the youngsters. When I visited there in September, 2015, I was thrilled to see these colourful monarch butterfly larvae as well as this pupa, on true milkweed.
I had never seen either of these and only identified them with the help of the guide who was happy to explain all about the life cycle of this beautiful (and threatened) species. The guide, herself passionately interested in and very knowledgeable about monarchs, showed us the plants that they preferred and helped us hunt until we found what we were looking for. It was a windy day, though still warm and it was not easy to get a photograph as the plants were blowing around so much, but I was glad to get these to share.
More information about the life cycle of the monarch butterfly can be found here:
http://monarchlab.org/biology-and-research/biology-and-natural-history/breeding-life-cycle/
And about the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens here: http://www.mainegardens.org
My posts are all on my blog: https://www.elliekennard.ca.
The combination of a summer cottage by a lake and a couple of elderly and eccentric great aunts has an irresistible appeal to any child born and brought up in the city.
My own particular great aunts were two spinsters, Olive and Francis, born at the end of the 19th century in Jersey, Channel Islands, the children of immigrants who arrived with their family in 1903. They lived for the winter months in an apartment in Montreal that had been their home since their arrival, but they left for “The Lake” as soon as the weather began to smell of spring. They loved the primitive log cabin they had and the forest with its many and varied inhabitants that surrounded them there. Our rare visits to them changed our lives.
The drive from Montreal to this remote lake seemed to take all day. The car would finally pull up at a basic wharf – nothing more than a dirt parking area really – with a public telephone box for the use of any island or lakeshore inhabitants and a couple of posts to which a boat could be tied.
The car would be parked and we would all pile out to be with our father as he would stand on the shore, cup his hands around his mouth and shout “Woyup! Woyup!”, several times, across the still water.
This call must have been a special signal for some waiting ear, as after about 15 minutes, a small motor boat could be seen heading across the lake in our direction . We would be greeted by one of the aunts who would bustle us and our belongings on board. We would then chug our way back across the lake to their cabin. There was no other way to get there in the early ’60’s and this was for us a great part of the adventure of the visit.
We didn’t go to the lake often, but these visits fostered a deep love for the simple joys of the country. As we sat in the single log room in the house whose interior walls were covered with brown craft paper, or lay on the canopied swing in the screened off porch at the top of the long wide flight of wooden steps, smelling the forest all around us, we city children learned the value of silence and what it can bring in the way of gentle visitors – squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks, birds, snakes, frogs and the occasional deer. There was no electricity in the cottage so the soft glow of the oil lamp would cast just enough light for us to work at our drawings or crafts, or read our books.
The girls’ bedroom, whose walls were also covered with brown paper, relieved only by a single framed display of pressed flowers, had one high double bed with a lumpy mattress. This bed was covered with a puffy eiderdown filled with feathers and we girls piled into it together, giggling as the downy feathers in the cover puffed up around us deliciously warm and occasionally escaped through a hole in a seam, to float around the room. The boys had a similar room and bed for themselves. Along one wall was a dresser with a large porcelain ewer and basin which had a matching soap dish beside it. This had fresh, cold water put in it each day and we used the basin to wash our hands and faces.
