Category: NATURE

Thursday Doors – Lucky 13

So here I am, still on WordPress and all set to stay awhile and participate in one of my favourite ‘challenges’ Thursday Doors!  I’m back in the world of graveyards again for this week’s entry as I couldn’t resist sharing a door I found in the city of Angoulême cemetery this week. The weather was particularly…

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(Extra) ordinary – A Ruined French House and a Fireplace

When we moved to France a few years ago, one of our projects was to be the restoration of a rather dilapidated cottage – the former caretaker’s cottage – in the grounds of our house.  At the time the cottage was already in a state of poor repair but it did at least boast a…

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Happy Place – a French Hillside and a View

When I saw the title of this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge I knew exactly what I would say if asked what is my ‘Happy Place’ and where I would go to find my ‘groove’ and inspiration . For almost 14 years now we have lived on a hillside in south western France. The roofs…

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Change – Sunflowers After the Sun

We’ve had the delight of fields of yellow surrounding us on the Hillside for a few months, but the sunflowers are finally being harvested. Here in France they are called ‘Tournesol’ which literally means turn to the sun, and this is exactly what they do. For several weeks seas of bright yellow faces look up…

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The Last Iris

Busily preparing and framing photos for a photography exhibition, I re-found a set of photos I thought were lost when my computer crashed a couple of months ago.  With the first day of Autumn arriving officially tomorrow with the September solstice I thought it might be a good moment to post this reminder of the…

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Monochromatic – Rhapsody in Blue

I’ve been wanting to finish my marathon fruit photography series with the wonderful damsons we’ve just picked from the orchard.  The colour of the bloom on the fruit is so blue and beautiful I’ve been wondering how best to capture it and had finally decided my plain blue crockery would be the perfect compliment. I…

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Growing Tomatoes and Connecting with Nature

I’ve thought a lot about the state of the world lately as we’ve been picking the fruit in the orchard and harvesting vegetables and herbs from the potager and the herb garden. It seems to me a sad thing, that for all the miracles of modern science and technology, so many of the supposed advances we…

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Blackberry Tuesday and the Colour Purple

Anyone looking at my recent blogposts would imagine I had a serious obsession with medieval churches and fruit. I’m going to add to this impression with my post for tonight and I make no excuses, it’s a busy time for fruit on the Hillside.  Most of the apple trees in the orchard are ready for…

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The Château and The Fairytale Swan

A trip out with the camera earlier in the week took me to a village I have not visited for a few years.  I confess I had quite forgotten what was there and after a quick look around the church – yet another fine example from the 12th century – we followed the path towards…

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Alliums, Garlic and a Potager

It’s been a good year so far on the Hillside for our potager. The plot near the orchard which we had ploughed up by the local farmer last year looked intimidatingly large at first, more suitable for feeding a couple of rugby teams than our tiny household, but as Mr H has worked his green-fingered…

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Dark Fruit #2 – Apricots

I had intended today to begin posting some photos of our summer theatre spectacular – first performance on Friday night – but as I’m still sorting through photos of the rehearsals and preparations and tomorrow is the dress rehearsal, I thought I’d wait a little longer to be able to include some of the costumes. Instead…

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Quotation #2 – Heaven in a Wild Flower

Recently discovered and already one of my favourite bloggers, Cosme of BCLPhotography – great posts and great photography, if you don’t know his blog you really should – has invited me to join an interesting new challenge, posting a favourite quotation over 3 consecutive days and inviting 3 other bloggers each day to join in….

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Darkest Fruit

Before moving to France 13 years ago I had always dreamed of having an orchard and indulging in a variety of homely pursuits like baking apple pies from my own apples and creating jams and conserves from my prizewinning strawberries and raspberries.  We now have the good fortune to have just such an orchard and…

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Exotic Fruits – The Cape Gooseberry -Physalis

I was browsing the exotic fruit aisle again in the supermarket this week and these wonderful Cape Gooseberries, or Physalis Peruviana to give them their proper name, took my fancy.  I must confess that I still haven’t actually eaten a single one of them, so intent have I been on capturing their astonishing forms and…

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Voluptuously Vivid and lots of Black

We have some beautiful geraniums in pots in our courtyard. The colour is an incredible rich and bright fuchsia which is almost impossible to capture in a photograph no matter the time of day or the light conditions. After numerous attempts I decided to try something a little different and photographed some of the older…

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A Whiter Shade of Pale – Serenity

There are those periods in life when we encounter nothing but square pegs and round holes, minor irritations, major headaches, and cloudy skies. Such has been life on the hillside these last few days and as usual I have sought some escape and a little tranquility through taking photographs. Having experimented with a number of…

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Hillside Views – Haybales

On our walks these last couple of days, Freddie the Labrador has insisted on walking along the field where the hay has recently been cut and turned into beautiful round bales.  They smell divinely of summer, sweet and warm with a sprinkling of sunshine and look particularly beautiful arranged in a string like a necklace of…

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Broken Beauty

I have been planting some new roses in the garden this week and after the rain a few days ago one of them was left looking a little bedraggled and started to lose its’ petals.  Having cut the blooms back quite hard to encourage the rose to grow and settle in its roots, I discovered…

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Enveloped – Weekly Photo Challenge

Enveloped Enveloped in a golden sunset, the earth sleeps, wrapped in dreams of summer……. The hillside was bathed in glorious sunset light the other evening when I took this and I thought it would express perfectly my idea of ‘enveloped’ for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge. I’ve included a monochrome version too…………. ……and a colour…

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Double Vision – 2 Dogs named Fred

One of my favourite blogging friends west517 and I both have a dog named Fred – we thought it might be fun to do one of our Double Vision posts – living as we do on different continents – to introduce them to each other.  Click the link above to see west’s post and read…

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Lilac Time – Vintage version

 AS I WAS ARRANGING THE WHITE LILAC I HAD CUT FROM THE GARDEN FOR YESTERDAYS’ POST, I KEPT THINKING OF MY GRANDMOTHER AND THE BEAUTIFUL GARDEN SHE HAD WHEN I WAS A CHILD. My grandparents’ house dated from the 1920’s, a solid suburban red brick and slightly tudoresque affair, blessed with a large plot to…

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Spring #3 – Lilac Time

EVER SINCE WE ARRIVED ON THE HILLSIDE 13 YEARS AGO I HAVE DREAMED OF MAKING A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN. In my imagination the lawns are mown into stripes and squares, flat and rich enough to welcome the most stringent player of bowls or croquet. The borders are full of exquisite flowering shrubs and unusual specimens arranged…

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