In a Vase on Monday: Snowdrops and Ivy

Something has had a good old nibble on those ivy leaves, providing must needed food in the depths of winter.

Joining Cathy for In a Vase on Monday.

Vase on Monday: Ivy and Driftwood

Look at those luscious green-black berries, I felt a bit mean bringing them inside as I am sure they will be a feast for a blackbird if the weather gets colder.

Last weekend I took Big Bro and Little Bro to Charmouth Beach to collect driftwood after the storms

The driftwood is the small bits lying in the foreground, plus some jetsam I could not resist. The large pieces of wood behind the vase are glorious tree stumps, from my son-in-law’s farm, yet to be shown off to their best advantage in my garden. They wait next to my high-rise bug-hotel, whilst I try to decide where to put them.

There is always an horrendous amount of plastic detritus washed up on the beaches, but I find it a fascinating mix of colour and texture with mysterious human backstories

Turquoise, yellow, black, rusty burnt orange, hints of cobalt blue and all the soft browns and greys of the pebbles – now just imagine a Fair Isle design knitted in those colours it makes me want to rush out and source the wool and get knitting.

And then a different palette

The main colour a soft turquoise, with deeper turquoise and sky blue, a hint of pink and orange and red, with caramel, stone, white and siamese beige – mmm delicious! Now, I can see that colour mix as a cosy crocheted throw, or maybe a poncho like Lucy’s, with more pale turquoise in it, or like this free patten on Ravelry. And if you prefer to knit, this one looks snuggly.

There were quite a lot of people heading for the rock slide to hunt for fossils, (a bit too dangerous for my liking) whilst I was delving into the piles of rubbish washed up on the beach, but it seems I was not the only one interested ….

….the man on the left is taking photos of rubbish too.

As I was picking through my haul to find some long sticks for the ‘Vase’ today, I just could not help having a play around

I spent rather too long dong this…….. so there are more such scenes to show you another day.

I popped the vase amongst the house plants, next to my houseplant of the week:

Meet little Myfanwy, a rather beautiful Streptocarpus.

Grown from a leaf cutting, this is her first flower. I’m very fond of her as Myfanwy is what my Mum wanted to call me, and it is also the title a delightfully haunting Welsh song

Linking in with Cee’s flower of the Day

Cathy’s Vase on Monday

Today’s flowers

Macro Monday

In 2 Vases on Monday

Last week I used a tall plastic pink vase, but readers could not tell from the photos that it was plastic

So here it is empty and lying flat with two more. I’m hoping these photos give you a better idea

The little mauve flowers – some sort of aster I think (?) are self seeded, as are the marigolds and the hypericum. I sat them on a plastic tablecloth with grass printed on it – funky? tacky? bonkers? – yes all three probably – but hopefully fun.

And things even seem to self-seed in my houseplants

Any ideas? The leaves have speckles on them.

And thenI just had to have a play with that madget gadget on my camera

Now I need an extra day in the week so that I can take time to draw this ivy.

See the last photo much larger on the PHOTOS page here.

I’m even wondering if this photo, printed very large, say poster size, would look good as a framed picture to go above my fireplace – hmmmm. What do you think?

Hop on over to Cathy’s blog to see some more stunning vases on Monday.

Additional info:

I bought the vases about 20 years ago and can not remember where from, but the wonders of Google images – and LOOK! There are simply masses of them around apparently!

Camera effect: I have a Nikon D5200. The effect is built in. It has a setting on the dial which says ‘EFFECTS’ and the one I used is the ‘Colour Sketch’ effect.

I presume you can create the same effect in Photoshop.