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Great tit - Parus major
The image was taken from my little garden hide. The autumnal colours in the background are brought out as the light illuminates the leaves of a bush behind the shot.
The great tit is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae.
*low res image shown
Rhododendrons at Witley Court and Gardens, Worcestershire
Some background information:
Witley Court is a Grade 1 listed ruined palatial mansion, which is located in a rural area between the towns of Worcester and Kidderminster in Worcestershire. It was devastated by fire in 1937 and never rebuilt, although only one third of the building was destroyed and Witley Court was once one of the finest houses of England.
The palace was built in 1655 on the site of a former Jacobean manor house near the village of Great Witley. After the Civil War, which lasted from 1642 to 1651, the house was sold to Thomas Foley, an ironmaster. He erected two towers on the north side of the house and his grandson Thomas Foley, the 1st Lord Foley, added the wings which enclose the entrance courtyard.
In 1735 the 2nd Lord Foley constructed a new parish church to the west of this courtyard, an undertaking begun by his father. The church was given a remarkable baroque interior in 1747 when he commissioned the famous Scotland-born architect James Gibbs to incorporate paintings and furnishings acquired at the auction of the contents of Cannons House. This was the magnificent Middlesex home of the Dukes of Chandos from where the artwork was shipped by canal to Great Witley.
In the second half of the 18th century the park was landscaped. This park conversion included sweeping away the village of Great Witley, which came too close to the south front of the house. Therefore the village was re-located to its present position.
In 1837 serious debt forced the 4th Lord Foley to sell the estate to the trustees of Lord Ward, later 1st Earl of Dudley, who had inherited a great fortune from the coal and iron industries in England’s Black Country.
In 1842 Witley Court was lent to Queen Adelaide, the widow of King William IV. From 1842 to 1846 the palace in the Worcestershire countryside was her residence, where she hold court. In 1846 Lord Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley, embarked on an ambitious rebuilding program which transformed Witley Court into an opulent neo-Palladian mansion. He engaged the architect Samuel Daukes, who had already altered his London house, Dudley House on Park Lane and the church at Great Witley, to remodel the house in Italianate style using ashlar stone cladding over the existing red brickwork. He also commissioned the garden designer William Andrews Nesfield to transform the gardens. Nesfield even designed the two monumental fountains. One of them – the more impressive one, which is dedicated to Perseus and Andromeda – has recently been restored to full working order.
In 1885 the 1st Earl of Dudley died and his son William Humble Ward, 2nd Earl of Dudley, together with his wife Rached Ward, Countess of Dudley, inherited the property. But In 1920 the 2nd Earl of Dudley sold Witley Court to Sir Herbert Smith, a Kidderminster carpet manufacturer.
Sir Herbert only kept on a skeleton staff to manage the house whilst there and away, and many areas were left unused. The property needed to be sold again following a major accidental fire in September 1937 due to the insurance company not paying out for the major damage. The fire started in the bakery, situated in the basement room of the now worst preserved tower whilst Sir Herbert was at another of his houses. The servants tried to put the fire out by the use of the ancient fire pump, which was connected to the fountain, but as this had not been maintained for many years, it failed to work.
Thereafter the estate, which was still intact except of one burnt down wing, was sold to scrap dealers who stripped what they could from the structure of the house, leaving it in complete ruins. In 1972 the remnants of the house and garden were acquired by the government. Almost 70 years after the devastation, its ruins are still spectacular, and today the property is in the care of English Heritage. Great Witley Church, which is attached to the ruins, survived the fire and the following stripping. Hence visitors can still view its beautiful paintings.
By the way, in 1967 the British rock band Procol Harum chose Witley Court as the backdrop for the video of their famous hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale".
Entrance to Garden of the Gods outside Colorado Springs, CO. I was just going to get a close-up shot of the sign at the entrance, but instead decided to find a spot on the hillside by the visitor center where I could get a larger, more interesting view that still included the sign.
*two-shot HDR (multiple exposure) panorama*
365/158 - More snow overnight, the scroll work on my little garden trellis caught my eye this morning.
white and purple garden lupins, (lupinus polyphyllus) with the pink and cream, flowers of the weigela shrub (weigela florida) in the background. hawick, scottish borders, scotland.
Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus).
Photographed in South Yorkshire, UK.
The abdomen of this specimen was no more than 1cm long.
Sharper focus and better exposure than the previous shot.
I'm not sure what this is, but I like it better in it's dried state in our garden. A little macro fun after the harvest.
Garden Song
John Denver
Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow.
All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row, Someone bless the seeds I sow.
Someone warm them from below, 'til the rain comes tumbling down.
Pulling weeds and picking stones, man is made of dreams and bones.
Feel the need to grow my own 'cause the time is close at hand.
Grain for grain, sun and rain, find my way in nature's chain,
to my body and my brain to the music from the land.
Plant your rows straight and long, thicker than with prayer and song.
Mother Earth will make you strong if you give her love and care.
Old crow watching hungrily, from his perch in yonder tree.
In my garden I'm as free as that feathered thief up there.
Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow.
All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row, Someone bless the seeds I sow.
Someone warm them from below, 'til the rain comes tumbling down.
# POTW: Yellow garden spiders are some of the iconic residents of gardens across North America.
Photo courtesy of Beth Waldron-Yuhas.
My new back garden is very small and is surrounded by a mixed hedge of beech and ivy.
I have tried to extend the boundary by painting a section of the fence to make it look as though there is a door into a further part of the garden. The bird house was already attached to the fence but I added the door handle and stone circle.
The tub in front of the door belonged to my grandmother, and is a "Possing Tub" or"Dolly tub" (washing tub) Over the years the surface has worn away and is now a wonderful subdued green.
This is the garden (and the next door temple beyond the cherry tree) viewed from our room at Jimyo in in Koyasan. It wasn't a special garden, but it was still nice, and as the town is high in the mountains the cherry was later, so this tree was still in flower, whereas there was only the last few flowers on trees in Kyoto.
The early morning light really highlighted the pagoda/temple across the road.
Huntington Gardens, Pasadena, California. I usually don't wheel my mother down the long hill to the desert (cactus/succulent) garden because pushing her back up about kills me. But this day my mother's aid Marta was with us so we went for it.
I think this particular garden at the Huntington is one of the finest; the plants are so wild, odd, colorful, and numerous it's like being on another planet.
I had both the new Ricoh RG and the Sony RX100 with me although the Ricoh is such a pleasure to use I never pulled the Sony out of my bag. These were shot in color and the monochromatic conversion was done in Lightroom. At some point I'm going to start shooting with the various filters built into the Ricoh GR but my style has always been to shoot RAW and do the other things downstream.
Garden Hedgehog. Photo Kevin Keatley, Camera Nikon D800, Lens Nikon 16-35mm@27mm, F16, 1/250 Sec., ISO 400, Camera and three flashes on manual, Time 22.12. I use an infra-red light beam to trigger the camera and the three flashes were placed one each side of the camera and one above pointing down. The two flashes at ground level had some white plastic over the flash heads and the one above had a 20cm soft box to help cut the shadows. I positioned the camera on one of our C14 Double bean bags, the two ground level flashes were on our E1 Ground spikes and the flash above was on the C22 Ultra pod mini clamp/tripod we supply. www.wildlifewatchingsupplies.co.uk/retail/acatalog/
Garden design. A late June photo of the garden just outside of the swimming area. The Hydrangea 'Annabelle' and Shasta Daisy are in full bloom. This garden is located in Warwick, New York.
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Garden art, in our garden. I painted some wooden posts in different shades of blue. Looks nice - and the birds like them, they sit on them and - as you can see - once in a while use them as toilet :-)
Kiev 88
Volna-3 MC 80mm 2.8 - ВОЛНА
Fuji Reala ISO 100
Negativscan
Garden (In the Biodiversity Park, Catanzaro - Italy)
Giardino (Nel Parco delle biodiversità, Catanzaro - Italia)
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Garden of Eden graphic available for download at http://dryicons.com/free-graphics/preview/garden-of-eden/ in EPS (vector) format.
View similar vector graphics at DryIcons Graphics.
As promised some evening shots of the impressive "gardens of light" in Bournemouth Gardens for the Christmas period...due to slow internet (and after 2 days of no internet) I'm having to upload a couple of shots at a time. These are hand held shots so not 100% clear and I've not edited them much (or not at all in some cases) !!
Bournemouth Gardens 20.11.2013