countryside – View from a French Hillside

Wordless Wednesday – Pink Roses

Wordless Wednesday – A Sea of Corn

Wordless Wednesday – A Sea of Corn ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY If you enjoy the photos on my blog please do visit my brand new website http://www.janemorley.photography where you will find many more photos and also http://www.theartcardpress.com for a host of greeting cards and…

Wordless Wednesday – Spring Blossom

Wordless Wednesday – Spring Blossom ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY If you enjoy the photos on my blog please do visit my brand new website http://www.janemorley.photography where you will find many more photos and also http://www.theartcardpress.com for a host of greeting cards and photographic prints and even http://www.galeriedelamaison.com where you can sneak a…

Wordless Wednesday – Time for Gardening

Wordless Wednesday – Time for Gardening ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY If you enjoy the photos on my blog please do visit my brand new website http://www.janemorley.photography where you will find many more photos and also http://www.theartcardpress.com for a host of greeting cards and photographic prints and even http://www.galeriedelamaison.com where you can sneak…

Thursday Doors – A Tiny Village Church

There is a tiny hamlet not far from the hillside which despite its diminutive size, boasts a number of lovely old buildings, a ‘town hall’ or Mairie and one of the sweetest little churches I have ever come across. The postage stamp grounds around it are always immaculately kept, the hedges and bushes trimmed and…

Wordless Wednesday – Promise of Spring

Wordless Wednesday – Promise of Spring ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY If you enjoy the photos on my blog please do visit my brand new website http://www.janemorley.photography where you will find many more photos and also http://www.theartcardpress.com for a host of greeting cards and photographic prints and even http://www.galeriedelamaison.com where you can sneak a…

Thursday Doors – In a French Cemetery

I hope I shall be forgiven for the slightly strange theme of my Thursday Doors post this week. Whilst visiting and photographing a number of extraordinary ancient churches in our area over the last few months, I have also taken the opportunity to wander and explore a few of the local cemeteries. The tiny glimpses into…

Wordless Wednesday – Good Things

Wordless Wednesday – Good Things ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY If you enjoy the photos on my blog please do visit my brand new website http://www.janemorley.photography where you will find many more photos and also http://www.theartcardpress.com for a host of greeting cards and photographic prints and even http://www.galeriedelamaison.com where you can sneak a peek at…

Wordless Wednesday – Winter Blossom

ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY If you enjoy the photos on my blog please do visit my brand new website http://www.janemorley.photography where you will find many more photos and also http://www.theartcardpress.com for latest news, a host of greeting cards and photographic prints!

Wordless Wednesday – Sheep

Wordless Wednesday – Skyscapes

Wordless Wednesday – In Memoriam

Wordless Wednesday – Autumn Landscape with Cows

Thursday Doors – The Ruined House Part II

My post for this week’s Thursday Doors is once again missing a door. It does however have a doorway and a hole for a window but sadly no roof. The house in question is our very own ruin, returning for a repeat performance to show off it’s other, though not necessarily better, side. …

Thursday Doors – The Proud Resident

I’m really hoping that Norm is going to forgive me for being totally frivolous with my Thursday Doors post this week – I promise to behave properly next week Norm. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist posting a picture or two from a series I thought I’d lost when my laptop crashed a while ago. There…

(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…

Thursday Doors – French Cottage Door and a Vine Tunnel

We have a friend in the village who has one of the prettiest gardens I have ever seen. Filled with box and privet hedges, roses, stone walls, an old well and a chestnut tree, the garden is a perfect example of the romantic garden, always green and beautiful in every season. The house is a traditional…

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…

Boundaries, Lines and Grapevines

The grape harvest (vendange in French) is well underway all around the hillside and watching the machines trundling up and down the rows of vines I decided I’d better get out and about with my camera before they finish and the grapes are gone for another year. The vines are one of the things I…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Thursday Doors – The Abandoned Farm Cottage

My offering for Thursday Doors this week is not exactly pretty and certainly not an impressive example of a door but I found this farm cottage on the edge of a quiet lane a compelling subject for a few photos. It seemed to be almost out of place amongst the lush vineyards of south western…

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…

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…

Thursday Doors – La Dimerie Blanzac

I risk repeating myself a little with today’s post for Thursday Doors, as I’m posting another tower, but this time the tower is quite small and the door that leads into it is very small and must surely have been built for a race of fairy people. The tower and the building it is attached…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Glorious Spring

The hillside has exploded in a riot of blossom and colour this week. I know I’m in danger of repeating myself by offering up another post with blossom as its’ subject but when I went out onto the orchard this afternoon to the glorious sight of the fruit trees abuzz with the industry of…

Rustic Beauty – The Humble Turnip

After the lovely promising spring weather of a fortnight ago we’re suddenly plunged back into the damp and chill winds of November here on the Hillside. Our sunny moods have departed with the warmer temperatures and so my plans for more spring inspired images for this post have been moved aside to make way for an…

Spring # 2 – Fragile Blossom

In the courtyard on our French Hillside is an almond tree. It has never been exactly prolific in producing fruit but its’ show of magnificent pale white-pink blossom is always our first herald of the arrival of spring. The tree itself is need of an expert prune as all the blossom is now bursting forth…

SPRING – Tender Tulips

Signs of Spring are appearing everywhere on the hillside now – tiny blue forget-me-nots, wild violets, the first cowslips, the early daffodils, even some very precocious iris are in full bloom seeking the warmth of the sun. Opportunities for photographs abound and I have a score of ideas for posts for the coming days. I…