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| Groyne! |
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| An ominous sky over the slipway |
will be held in November to give you chance to tend to your garden/window box/house plant/salad drawer and take plenty of photos, as well as brighten up an otherwise dull, cold month (at least in the Northern Hemisphere).
Now, for anyone new/forgetful/bewildered, the Infomaniac Garden Photos Event is an online horticultural extravaganza, conceived by (and for the first nine years, hosted by) the Infomaniac herself, The Very Mistress. It is a place for you to show off part or all of your garden - or even just a single botanical specimen - to an appreciative Blogorati; to swap gardening tips/horror stories; or just take a virtual wander around someone else's garden, satiating your curiosity from the comfort of your own home. There will be no judging or critiquing, and there certainly won't be a "winner" as the Garden Photos Event is not a contest!
A Garden Photos Event history can be found here, along with links to previous Events leading up to 2020. 2020's gardens follow on from the link - just click on "Newer Post" at the bottom, or click here for a handy programme of events (and my garden).
Now, go forth and garden!
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| Some sort of big bromeliad flower-spike |
As that feeling of dread and despair is telling you, yes, this is a VERY photo-heavy post. I almost didn't do it as I could barely be bothered to choose the photos and then resize them all (not to mention smush some of the flower photos together so as not to really go overboard with images...). Almost...
Anyway, let's get on with it, shall we? The sooner we start, the sooner it'll be over and you can return to your knitting/day-time drinking/uphill gardening (delete as appropriate).
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| Foxgloves for me... |
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| ... and Fuchsias for Jon. This one has grown into a small tree. |
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| It's so tall that even I have to look up to see up its skirts! |
How has half the year passed by already? How?!?
Anyway, continuing on from the first quarter's update, here are the highlights of what I've read, watched and listened to from April to June:
Read
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| Yes we have books on a chair. Why bother reading, otherwise? |
∘ Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding - Again, again.
∘ Star Trek The Motion Picture: Inside the Art and Visual Effects, by Jeff Bond & Gene Kozicki - I found this to be a rather fascinating read, and I had no idea of the time pressures and obstacles the production was up against. Although, I'd've liked a few more pictures. Actually, I should be more specific as there are loads of cool pictures, it's just that many of them are quite small (in order to fit them in, I should think, otherwise the book would be the size of a car), and I would like to see even more photos of the V'Ger model (because I'd recently found some that I hadn't seen before online somewhere, so I had my expectations up). All that being said, there are some gorgeous full & two-page spreads of photos and artwork that did not disappoint.
∘ Star Trek: Living Memory, by Christopher L. Bennett - I love the 80s Star Trek movie era, Uhura, and Christopher Bennett's Trek novels, so I'd got my hopes way up for this one. While it employed the exacting and precise writing style of his previous novels, easily recognisable characterisation, and an excellent use of continuity-weaving as always, Living Memory fell rather flat for me. I couldn't "hear" Uhura (although the other characters came through easily) and I'd like her to have featured more than she does. I thought the conflict conversations between Uhura and Shastri, and Kirk and Janith-Lau/Arcturian Warborn were too much like speeches - all civil and reasonable - and so I found them unrealistic and rather dull. However, I did like the elephants (more please!), "meeting" Uhura's family, the look at Denobula, and the inclusion of Clark Terrell and the Reliant (from ST II), and Joel Randolph (from ST IV).
∘ The Flight of the Pterosaurs, a pop-up book by Keith Moseley - Rather spare on text, but beautifully illustrated. The pop-ups are rarely of the pterosaurs, strangely - instead they're of plants and insects in the scenes, mostly. Although, the final pop-up is quite spectacular - two Quetzalcoatlus northropi soaring over a sauropod corpse.
∘ Star Trek: Dwellers in the Crucible, by Margaret Wander Bonanno - I hadn't read this one* in a LONG time, and had almost forgotten how "grown up" this novel seems - mainly, I think, because the Enterprise crew barely feature in it. The story is based around the kidnapping of a young human woman and her Vulcan would-be friend, and how they bond while in captivity. Some of it is rather harrowing, and not everyone gets out unscathed (or even alive).
I knew getting a trolley at the garden centre was a bad idea...
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I've been out today. Yes, I know. Anyway, I popped to Sainsbury's in North Walsham to get some essentials - you know, gin, tonic, chocolate etc. etc. - and then drove across town to Hadfields garden centre (the one with the tearoom - you remember!).I deliberately walked in without taking a trolley, but within five minutes, my hands were already full, so I doubled back and got one. Ten minutes later my purse gave a resigned sigh and unclenched...
These rather gorgeous triffids are the result: a couple of perennial foxgloves (yes, I know I've missed some of the flowering season, but I love foxgloves and couldn't resist these. In fact, I used to have the pink one - Digitalis x valinii "Illumination Pink" - but the exceptionally cold winter did it in), two beautiful irises, a small Philadephus x lemoinei "Belle etoile" the small white flowers of which made Car smell heavenly on the way home, a Fatsia japonica "Spiderweb" (with the white splayed hand-shaped leaves), three small ferns, and an Acanthus spinosus.
The green rosette of leaves at the front is a Digitalis parviflora (another foxglove which will have small chocolate-coloured flowers - I used to have one of these up my Back Passage!) that came home with me not from Hadfields, but from The Old Vicarage Garden in East Ruston. Yes, I made a return visit there and there will be photos.
So many photos...
