Sofia’s challenge for us this week is all about colour. Specifically primary colours: red, yellow and blue. BUT like many things in the world, the issue of what are primary colours has become more complex. Most of us would have learned when painting at school that RYB (Red, Yellow and Blue) are THE primary colours, but now we have to take into consideration the way light blends colour for instance the RGB colour model, which has red, green, and blue as your primary colours, and is used with things like television screens and computer images. Then there is the CMYK model which includes cyan, magenta, yellow, as well as black, and is mainly utilised for printing.
“I found I could say things with colour and shapes
that I couldn’t say any other way;
things I had no words for.”
~ Georgia O’Keeffe
Since the main colours for paint pigments are red, yellow and blue and cannot be created by mixing other pigments I’ve stuck to photos in these colours for the challenge.
Once upon a time (2016) I ran a challenge on my Earth Laughs in Flowers blog with different topics for each month. During July it was edibles. So I have picked out a few of my favourites from that month for Denzil’s challenge this week.
As summer comes to an end you see the fruits appearing in the orchards all over the country. Kent is known as the ‘Garden of England’ and where better to show you fat, juicy, purple plums
Kentish Plums
and fresh crisp pears.
Kentish pears
Known as zucchini in the USA, Germany and Australia from the Italian word zucchina or simply squash or baby marrows in other parts of the world. The word courgette comes from France. Although considered a vegetable in the culinary sense, botanically it is actually a fruit.
Courgettes / Zucchini
Herb gardens and potagers are favourites of mine. And herbs are really the only edibles that I have been successful in growing.
My herb garden: Society Garlic, Golden Marjoram, Lemon Verbena, Sage, Nasturtiums, Sweet Cicely, Parsley, Borage, Garlic Chives, Origanum
A potager is really a combination of a traditional English kitchen garden (which always used to be consigned to the back of the garden) and the style and elegance of a French garden. Plants are chosen for their edible and ornamental nature and put together in such a way to look beautiful whilst providing food for the table.
Potager where edible flowers and herbs grow among vegetables.
A potager can be any design, from traditional knot gardens to informal cottage garden style.
Potager
Sunflower seeds or kernels are commonly eaten as a snack food. Often used in bread making and baking, added to muesli and other cereals, mixed with peanut butter or even made in to sunflower butter as well as being sold as food for wild birds.
Sunflower
Finally my daughter’s allotment. With a growing family and a full-time job as a child minder as well as studying for a degree she no longer had time for it so had to give it up, but for several years she managed a plot a few hundred yards from her home where she learned how to grow her own produce for the table. Beans, carrots, onions, squash, courgettes, sweetcorn, garlic, peas, radishes, beetroot, strawberries, rhubarb and even Cape gooseberries.
Beetroot
An allotment is a lot of hard work – preparing the soil, digging in lots of compost and manure (where she lives it is all clay), weeding, sowing, watering, keeping bugs at bay – but the rewards are immense.
Gem squash
Not only the flavours of freshly picked produce, but also the ability to grow unusual varieties not found in the supermarket, the knowledge that no air miles are involved, the sense of achievement in growing your own and the enjoyment of sheer hard work keeping you fit and healthy and outdoors.
In a world that seems increasingly rushed and with information overload it is easy to miss things around us. When life is busy you often look, but don’t really see. I am sure that until I retired I wasn’t always fully aware of my surroundings. But now I can take my time and fully absorb the environment around me and maybe see things that are often overlooked.
Did I notice this cat because it reminded me of my old cat Ben? Perfectly poised on steps above my head.
Photo challenges have had an impact on the way I see things, looking for the unusual, the interesting, things I may not have photographed before.
Farm shop delights. I think it was the wicker baskets that made me stop and take this photo
And on my travels I always look out for the details.
The organic shapes of these bowls and the shadows
Different ways of framing the view.
Adobe Window framing the view
Macro delights when you’re not always sure of what you will see.
A drunken bee
Taking time when wandering around a place to notice the unusual.
Quirky brass door handlesAn unusual window display by someone who loves cats
Finding the unexpected when out in nature. I was concentrating on the pied wagtail on the lovely textured fence.
A fairy? Or a wagtail’s dinner?
My love of textures always has me snooping around churchyards, the older the better.
Detail on a headstone
And seeking patterns in unusual places. I’m sure people think I am mad when I stop to photograph something beneath my feet.
Floor of a Victorian palm houseManhole cover in Cesky Krumlov
And who stops to look at a row of wetsuits they are not interested in buying? But it’s fun spotting the odd one out.
This week’s challenge from Denzil is interesting, visit his site for lots of information about tree bark that you probably never knew. I have always been fascinated by bark, mainly for the colours and textures so here’s a few from my archives.
The amazing texture of Xanthorrhoea glauca, the Australian grass tree.
Prunus serrula. A magnificent small garden tree for year round interest its most prominent feature is its tactile, silky, polished bark. The smooth, mahogany bark peels in translucent cinnamon and honey coloured sheets to reveal a fresh new hue of bronze-red gloss beneath. Caught in autumn sunlight this tree almost glows.
Prunus serrula, called birch bark cherry, birchbark cherry, paperbark cherry, or Tibetan cherry, is a species of cherry native to China
This multi-stemmed one is a highly prized specimen.
Chinese Paperbark Maple
Chinese Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum) has the advantage of being attractive all year round: in spring, when the leaves appear, in autumn when its wonderful, rich leaf colour shines, and throughout the dormant season because of its remarkable bark. When the brilliant deep crimson and scarlet leaves have fallen in late November, the full majesty of the rusty-brown bark, which peels in loose tatters, is revealed. Catching it with the sunlight behind creates this gorgeous orange-cinnamon peel.
Australian Eucalyptus / Gum trees often have interesting coloured bark.
Sydney Blue Gum
Sydney Red Gum
Sydney Red Gum
Scribbly gums are a type of eucalyptus or gum tree. There are a few species that are known as scribbly gums as they all have the ‘scribbles’ across their bark.
Scribbly gum is a name given to a variety of different Australian Eucalyptus trees which play host to the larvae of scribbly gum moths which leave distinctive scribbly burrowing patterns on the bark.
And I’ll leave you with this. Along the road to Potato Point (NSW, Australia) you will come across the most magical tree. An enchanting gum tree decorated with toadstools, butterflies, dragonflies and flowers amongst the discarded eucalyptus leaves. Want to know more? Click here.
Nymphaeaare rhizomatous, submerged aquatic perennials with floating, rounded leaves and showy, sometimes fragrant, cup- or bowl-shaped flowers in a wide range of colours, held on or above the water and followed by submerged, berry-like fruits.
These water-lilies are in Kew Garden’s Victorian Waterlily House completed in 1852, which was specifically to showcase the giant Amazon waterlily (Victoria amazonica) – a natural wonder of the age.
The Nelumbonaceae (Lotus-lily) are from Sydney’s Botanic Garden (Australia) in the main and waterlily ponds close to the Palm Grove Centre.
Lotus flowers are considered sacred in China, Tibet and India and the lotus flower is symbolic in Hindu and Buddhist religions as lotus displays all the different stages of growth simultaneously – bud, flower and seed pod.
Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #21 | Water Plants
TRAVEL WORDS 