The right light

The past few days have been increasingly frustrating for me when it comes to taking photos in my garden. It prompted me to post about garden photography. I'm not by any means a professional photographer but my photos have been chosen to grace the front cover and inside of chapter of a gardening book a few years ago and they've been posted here for a few years now.

First of all, I use a simple point and shoot digital camera. It's not even a newer model but it has an excellent zoom lens which was my first criteria. So fair warning, my tips are not applicable to the super deluxe cameras that are out on the market.

Lighting is a big key factor in garden photography. The absolute best light is a good cloud cover. Full sun or early morning sun is very hard for me to work with.

The opening shot was taken in full late afternoon sun which can sometimes be used to your advantage. The flower is Campanula punctata which is just a pale creamy pink on the outside. What's cool about this shot is that the bloom is almost translucent and the spotting you see is actually on the inside of the bloom.

Here's the same flower taken on a cloudy day (see the sky?) and from underneath so you can see the spots. By the way, those power lines just totally ruin the photo. Never forget to look around inside your frame and make sure that there aren't other distractions in the background.


Working in the shade can bring another set of problems. I took quite a few photos of my Hydrangea blooms in hopes of getting one with enough clarity to crop and zoom. This isn't close to what I'd like to have but good enough to share.

Blues and sometimes magenta pinks are just impossible to capture. In the days of film, it was very hard to be able to capture the blues and I'm still having the same problem with digital cameras. In real life these blooms don't look like they have some terrible fungus growing on them. Yuck!

Here I was able to capture the color pretty well but unfortunately the strong dappled lighting coming through the trees creates shadows that distract you from the true beauty of these Hydrangeas.

By the way, forget the roses, give me Hydrangeas any day. My next garden is going to be chock full of these luscious, romantic blooms.

Last week I was complaining about the never ending rainy season we were having. One advantage though was the hundreds and hundreds of photos I was able to take.

So cross your fingers for me, I'd love just a half hour of cloud cover in the morning so I can take some more pictures to share with you.

Melanie

The Promise

This evening was the first time this season that I went around and live-headed my daylilies. Live-head, a term that many people have never heard.

When a gardener dead-heads a plant, they are removing a spent bloom. Some plants don't require this but others, like daylilies, show much better if the the spent bloom is removed.


Nothing looks prettier than a daylily clump loaded with crisp clear blooms like on this antique variety 'Try It'.

What you'll rarely find though is a photo of the ugly drippy mess that awaits you the next morning.

Yuck, nothing is worse than removing gooey, wet daylily blooms that stain your fingers and shorts with purple and red.


Rather than wait for the morning, I love walking around in the evening and removing the still live bloom. It gives me a chance to see each and every daylily up close. 'Dark Monkey' here was facing away from the front of the bed but when I had it in my hand I just had to rub my fingers over the velvety interior.


At first it's disconcerting to see your garden go from full glory to bare nakedness but wait, look closer and you'll see it. It's the promise, the knowing that tomorrow you will once again have a garden full of jewels.


Different cultivars show their promise differently. The long, curly spidery forms that I adore look more like banana peppers with little puckered kisses on the end.

Some varieties are brazen in their promise, sticking out their tongues in advance, hoping for that instant moment of romance in the garden, the brush of pollen against their waiting pistils.


Tonight I spent a long time looking through the lens of my camera, searching for the promise of what is to come. It was the most amazing feeling, I could have taken hundreds of photos of blooms that are just waiting for their moment of glory.

At the end of it all, the buckets of blooms are spilled upon the compost heap, and that too is a promise of riches to come.

Tomorrow will be beautiful, I promise.

Melanie

Flowers for Lauren

Today is my daughter Lauren's 20th birthday. I rarely post about my girls but yesterday I posted about Emily so of course I have to write about Lauren today.

Lauren has been a constant companion with me on numerous garden tours. We've been at conventions and tours in Detroit, Philadelphia, central Florida, Boston and many other locations and Lauren won't let me forget we already have a date for a tour in Louisiana in 2011.

Last night Lauren requested lots and lots of flowers for her birthday. Not the standard arrangements that are created by professional florists but my arrangements which tend to look like my garden, a mass compendium of plant material.

When she wakes up she'll find three arrangements waiting for her. One is large and two are mid-sized.

Of course they aren't out on the brick patio but in various parts of the house. Today's lighting though wasn't conducive to indoor photography (not much better outside either).

There will also be small single specimens for her to place where ever she wants. How many of you are cringing right now?

Yes, the noxious, notorious Houttyunia cordata is in these arrangments. Fair warning here, if you see a lovely colored foliage plant with the nickname 'Chameleon Plant' do NOT buy this plant. Unfortunately, I inherited a piece but luckily I have it contained in one portion of the garden.

The good news is Houttyunia's a beautiful addition to a cut flower arrangement. I try to pull out the whole stem with as much root as possible and just chop off the root before putting it in the vase.

Do you cut flowers from your garden?

When 1 plus 1 equals 1

A number of years ago my young daughter Emily wanted to hybridize her own daylily. Daylilies are extremely easy to hybridize and she had seen me do so for many years. Her goal was to make one and name it "Mac & Cheese" so she chose two parents that she thought would create her perfect daylily.

This is 'Nutmeg Elf', a little orange daylily that blooms like crazy. It was the pod parent, meaning that it was the Mommy.

This is 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' which was the pollen parent (the Daddy). Both of these daylilies are small, of narrow form, have tall scapes, excellent branching and lots and lots of blooms.

This is one of the resultant children from that cross. Since it's been a number of years (my guess is 5 or 6) since Emily has crossed these two daylilies, the seedlings are large clumps now.

Although I will never register any of these seedlings, I also won't get rid of them. They are excellent landscape daylilies, bringing lots of color and joy to my garden.

Somewhere in my external hard drive I have a photo of Emily making the actual cross. When I have time I'll have to go hunting for it so I can post it here too.

Melanie