PICK OF THE PIX: BUTTERFLY

As summer seems to have briefly returned to these islands, here's a favourite photo that I took in Marle Place Gardens, Brenchley, Kent, a few summers ago..

 

 

EASTER GOLD

A house with daffodils in it is a house lit up,

whether or no the sun be shining outside. 

– A A Milne

DOWN TO EARTH

Happy Earth Day 2012...

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children.

– Native American Proverb

Image: Brian Sibley © July 2009

KALYMNIAN KOLOUR

The landscape on Kalymnos can often look bleached and barren, but there is still color: the blue of the sky and the white of the whitewashed churches...

...and the passionate blush of the hibiscus...

Images: Brian Sibley © 2009 and uploaded via my flickr Photostream.

DOWN TO EARTH

Following on from my recent rose photos, I'm returning to gardening mode with the following sign spotted by the ever-vigilant ROGER at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisely...


Oh, yuck! You didn't, Roger, did you...?

Image: Roger Shrigley © 2009

A ROSE BY ANY NAME

I took some photos recently of a rose picked from my garden and was looking for a poem to accompany them...

I found this one by W E Henley...

O GATHER ME THE ROSE

O gather me the rose, the rose,
While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
And winter waits behind it.

For with the dream foregone, foregone,
The deed foreborn forever,
The worm Regret will canker on,
And time will turn him never.

So were it well to love, my love,
And cheat of any laughter
The fate beneath us, and above,
The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
The sunshine and the swallow,
The dream that comes, the wish that goes
The memories that follow!

- William Ernest Henley

Images: Brian Sibley © 2009 uploaded by flickr.

FLOWER BED

Hotel rooms are, to me, a constant source of fascination - occasionally they are a real and satisfying surprise, more often than not, however, they are a sorry disappointment. But in every case (good, bad or indifferent) the hotel - your home away from home - is absolutely nothing like your own home --- or, indeed, the home of anyone you've ever known!

For example, on a previous visit to Amsterdam our hotel bedroom had the singular distinction of lacking any of those prints and pictures (of invariably little or no artistic merit!) that are a usual part of the holiday hotel experience.

In fact the only decoration was dramatic, simple and proscriptive...


On our most recent visit (in another wing of the same hotel) we had a very different room: although still lacking pictures it did have a wonderfully outrageous, illuminated, bed-head 'window' onto the tulip fields of Holland --- and, frankly, we were rather surprised at the size of the blooms!


Images: © Brian Sibley, David Weeks, 2007

HEARTS AND FLOWERS

According to the on-line catalogue of flowershop.com : "Your friends and loved ones will understand exactly how you feel when they see this powerful wreath signifying a broken heart."


Can I just say to any friends and loved ones - by way of advance notice - that when the question of ‘floral tributes’ eventually arises, I’d be most grateful - broken-hearted though you may be at my passing - if you'd avoid anything even vaguely as grotesque as the above...

And if any of the following tacky tributes inspire wild ideas - such a BBC microphone recreated in roses or a likeness of Peter Jackson done in mixed carnations - then I can only beg you: resist the temptation!










Since, when the time comes, you will be (literally) "the last to LET ME DOWN" --- please, don't let me down!