Up Close. . .

Sometimes it pays to take a moment to see the little things.

Photos taken recently in my garden.

If you want to see more photos please visit my other blog The Streaming Now - it is updated more often than this one!

All photos by Susannah Bec

Spring is Springing - Yellow Everywhere!

Well the sun has been shining here and it is really feeling like Spring. I have been out in the garden enjoying the blue sky and the glorious yellow of all the Forsythia in bloom.

Here are a few photos taken around my garden on Saturday. You can find more photos over at my other blog - The Streaming Now - Click Here to visit, and enjoy more images of a beautiful Spring day in my garden with me!

How is the weather where you are?

"At first a small line of inconceivable splendour emerged on the horizon, which, quickly expanding, the sun appeared in all of his glory, unveiling the whole face of nature, vivifying every colour of the landscape, and sprinkling the dewy earth with glittering light." - Ann Reacliffe

Bina joined me in the sunshine while the other two cats snoozed in the sun in their cat run (the big converted aviary you can see in the background of the third photo down)

"Animals are such agreeable friends -

they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms."
- George Eliot

May Spring bring you Sunshine!

I Have a Confession to Make. . .

I have bought a new mat for just inside our front door. The old one was black and dull but perfectly serviceable.

The new one is a really beautiful colour, a Mediterranean summer sea colour, a gorgeous cobalt blue that lifts my spirits.

But here comes my confession.

I don't want it to get dirty!

So ever since it has been in place, whenever we come indoors instead of wiping our feet as we used to with the old mat.

I make us jump over it so we don't get it dirty! :-)

Sammy and the Squirrel

Sammy had just woken up from his nap on the sofa beside my desk, when he looked up and saw the squirrel just outside the window. I didn't even have to leave my desk to watch this unfold right beside me. . .

He just had to get a closer look.

...the Squirrel was looking at him too.

They were really checking each other out.
Sammy was fascinated by his new squirrel friend.

Until all at once, he had gone!

Leaving Sammy peering through the window
waiting for his squirrel friend to return.

We had a Special Visitor to our Garden....

"The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature,
was the first spiritual experience." - Henryk Skolimowski

I looked out of the window as a flash of white caught my eye and there on the fence post was an albino squirrel. We have been seeing it around for at least five years now, scampering through those trees that you can see in the distance and it once visited our bird table where Joe managed to capture him on video - you can see it on youtube - click here.

But we hadn't seen it lately and it was a real surprise to see it in
our garden investigating and obviously looking for food.

It then took a giant leap and landed in the bush right outside the window
where we stared each other in the eyes for a few seconds.

Sorry about the poor quality of the photos, I really will have to clean my windows! ;-)

"We are a landscape of all we have seen." - Isamu Noguchi

Peace and Joy!

"All we are saying is give peace a chance…" - John Lennon

"There is no way to peace; peace is the way." - A. J. Muste

"Peace, like charity, begins at home." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Wishing you PEACE and Incredible JOY!

I would just like to . . .

Wish you all. . .

&

From my home to yours !

May this festive season bring you
good health, peace, happiness
and incredible joy!

Much love to all who visit here
Susannah x

I just found this photo. . .

Sammy when he was a tiny kitten
fast asleep, curled up in a bowl.

Isn't he adorable!

Orange and Gold...

Orange and Gold
...is the colour of autumn.

The beautiful trees that I can see from my window
when I am sitting at my computer

. . . and it's also the colour of certain CATS!

Sammy curled up asleep in the computer chair.


"The wind-blown leaves turn
Dancing the golden sunlight
across the tired floor."
- Matt Dimmic


I hope your autumn is full of colour too!

Flowers!

There I was in the supermarket admiring the big bunches of flowers, when I noticed the young man checking the dates and putting reduced price tickets on some of them.

He picked up two big bunches that were originally £5 each and stuck on labels for 20 pence each!!

I couldn't believe it and knew that it was my lucky day as I snapped them up and bought them home!

£10 flowers for 40 pence - sounds good to me!

Above them in the photo, the painting with the yellow flowers I got from a car boot sale a couple of weeks ago for 50 pence (I am a big spender aren't I !)

The other is an artwork I made several years ago, it looks wonderful as the light changes and alters where the shadows cast by the raised squares fall...the shadows give so much added dimension.

I am SO pleased with my flowers and I am sure I will be obsessively checking for more flower bargains every time I go to the supermarket now! :-)

The Last Day of August in my Garden

"When summer gathers up her robes of glory,
and like a dream of beauty glides away."
- Sarah Helen Power Whitman

We have had some beautiful weather over the last few days and I finally ventured outside into the garden again. It is wonderful to walk around looking at what is new when I haven't visited it in what seems ages. Flowers have given way to berries and seed heads and there are some other flowers that are only just coming into their own, lots of things have been late to bloom this year.

So in the warm sunshine and with three cats following me as I walked. . . I took these photos.

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Pleasure in Pictures

These three pictures give me pleasure every time I pass them in my hallway, the one to the right (only partially seen) is called sea view and the one on the left is called wave, the middle one that I bought from a car boot sale a couple of weeks ago seems to link them perfectly. . .

"I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine." - Primo Levi

What pictures in your home give you pleasure?

Mid July In My Garden

"The hum of bees is the voice of the garden."
- Elizabeth Lawrence

Take Time To Smell The Roses

Wow, it seems so long since I updated. Sometimes that happens! I go through times when I have lots to say and then times like recently where I keep going to start a post then get distracted and never seem to get around to it. Well I am here now and I hope you are well.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell
that was once associated with it.
- Nabokov

Everything is blooming wonderfully in the garden, two roses that I bought a couple of years ago are throwing out lots of flowers and the most delicious scents.

When I was a child and my Mother used to collect me from school, we used to walk home past some glorious flower beds planted with all sorts of Roses, I loved the smell and I would stop and gather the fallen petals and fill my pockets and then my t shirt - I would hold it out in front of me and fill it with my multi coloured Rose petals before carefully folding it back to my body to keep them safe until I made it home.

Once I got these fragrant Jewels home, I would make Rose petal perfume or just leave them scattered around drying and filling my bedroom with the most delicious smell.

Even now I love the smell of Roses and can't resist leaning in to smell them, they bring back so many memories of my childhood.

The gardens of my youth were fragrant gardens
and it is their sweetness rather than their patterns of their
furnishings that I now most clearly recall.
- Louise Beebe Wilder

Here is something that I wrote a couple of years ago explaining how I felt about Roses.

"Lately I have been stopping to smell the flowers, the Roses in particular. Everywhere I go just lately seems to be littered with beautiful blooms just begging me to smell them. Wonderful huge flowers that could be displayed in the finest art gallery in the land and all in the most delicious of colours.

I must admit to feeling a little let down though, when after being summoned by some vision of loveliness I brave the stares of passers by and walk over some neatly manicured lawn edge to find that the beauty has no fragrance.

It is like talking to a pretty girl or handsome man and finding that their beauty is only skin deep, it feels you have been misled, cheated, I don't just want surface beauty, I want it to be built into every fragrant molecule. Roses should smell like Roses."

Take time to smell the roses!

Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem,
every flower fumes like a censer;
noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.
- Charles Baudelaire

Do You Know the Names of These Plants?

There are some things growing in my garden that I don't know the names of.

I thought I would post photos in case any of my readers could tell me what they are called.

This was originally all variegated but since I have moved it, has reverted to mainly green.
It dies down to nothing each winter and comes up again in the Spring, eventually
it will have small yellow flowers up each stem. - any ideas?

This pink flowered plant in the foreground grows everywhere around here.
I bought it from a plant sale outside someone house last year
but didn't register what it was called?

This is the plant that I bought with me from the old cottage we used to live in.
It has small star like flowers and the berries eventually turn red. - Any ideas?

These are everywhere! They come up every year and are quite beautiful!
Such lovely colours but I have no idea what it is called. Have you?

Now this looks like some sort of nightshade?
It was here when we came and gets quite rampant,
so I dug it up and put it into a pot - its berries turn a really dark shiny red.

Thanks for any identification you could help with!
They are still beautiful without names but it
would be nice to know what they are called.

Finally

A photo I took of Ms. Mitz yesterday!

Isn't it wonderful!