My Garden — Page 26 — You are in My World Now

I can’t take a bad photo of this rose

August 6, 2007 by Tricia

This rose, Breath of Life, is so gorgeous that I don’t think it’s possible for me, or anyone for that matter to take a bad photo of it:

I’ve been growing this rose at the entrance to my backyard for the last 5 years and as I’ve said I don’t think a single one of my photos of this rose has ever not turned out well.

I suppose it’s a combination of the color and perhaps even where the rose is in my garden – lighting wise as we know those are often factors that make or break a photograph. I mean, I’ve got some lovely red flowers that up until I got my SLR camera I had to struggle to take a decent photo of just because the color red can be so difficult to photograph.

The rose looks more pink than coral in this photo but for the most part it’s usually a very light coral. I love the rose! I also love having such a spectacular rose at the start of my garden as it hints at what visitors might encounter.

Do you garden or do you enjoy taking photos? Have you found that some colors are easier to photograph than others?

If you’d like to learn more about growing lovely roses like this one:

Taylor’s Guide to Roses: How to Select abd Grow 380 Roses, Including the New Hardy Ever-Blooming Varieties – Flexible Binding (Taylor’s Gardening Guides)

Or if you’d like to learn more about the art of photography:

Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography (Updated Edition)

Phlox and black eyed susan

August 5, 2007 by Tricia

Join

My white phlox is just beautiful this year. The flowers are perfect.

Did you know that Phlox David has a light scent too? We grow this right beside our patio – it’s lovely to look at and when we catch a little of it’s faint scent it’s nice too.

Do you grow phlox? It’s an easy plant to grow.

The black eyed susans grow right beside the phlox and it makes a lovely pairing when both plants are in bloom.

The phlox’ blooms will die off soon, but the black eyed susans will keep blooming pretty much until it starts to cool.

I’ve tried to pick a large variety of plants that bloom for either a long time, or rebloom several times through the season. I also have a lot of plants that bloom just in spring, just in summer and just in the fall so there’s always flowers around.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

I wish I’d planned our patio better

July 27, 2007 by Tricia

When we created our lovely garden and patio we were planning more for the garden than anything else. While I love our garden I often wish that I’d made our patio area at least 15 square feet larger than it is. Why? Well, we have plenty of room for our really nice patio set, and we have garden beds around two sides of the patio creating a nice intimate feel … but we have no room for our barbecue!

Our barbecue is in the driveway chained to the wall. That’s where we cook. Then we either bring our food to our patio table or back inside if it’s too hot or if it’s raining.

We need to create an outdoor kitchen. With that extra space that I really should have planned for when we landscaped our yard we could have had a built in barbecue or even a stone stove. We could have even had cabinets to keep our various utensils and BBQ supplies in.

Perhaps I’ll redo our patio area one day. All I’d really have to do would be to move one raised garden bed back a few feet. Not as easy as it sounds but quite possible.

Do you have a landscaped yard? If you do, did you plan an outdoor kitchen into it?

Birds at the feeder

July 5, 2007 by Tricia

This is a photo of some of the birds that are always in our back yard. We have two big feeders side by side that are quite large and these birds can eat them clean within two days. Or less!

Piggy birds!

Aren’t they pretty though? They don’t look like much from a distance but when you get a close up photo you can see all the different colors in the feathers on their bodies and heads.

I like the bird on the right who’s head is just poking around the corner. He or she seems to be saying – I see you, I know what you are up to!

Cardinals and butterflies

June 25, 2007 by Tricia

I can’t believe it. You know what I saw in my garden yesterday afternoon? A cardinal!

I saw one once before, maybe two years ago, but not since then.

It’s so nice to know that my lovely garden is attracting all kinds of wildlife that we don’t normally see in the middle of such a big city.

Looking out at the garden today I’ve seen at least three different monarch butterflies buzzing around all the flowers. They are so pretty!

Now, I must get some photos of these creatures if I can. Last year I hunted down a butterfly for days that was hanging out around my Rose of Sharon tree. Every time I brought out the camera the butterfly flew away as if it knew I was trying to take it’s photo. I did eventually get a few great shots of it though.

Now to do it again.