Shades of Green

With a “to do in the garden” list ticking like a time bomb I’m taking photos of the indoor plants. I must be going mad! I should be outside: digging, planting, gathering, covering etc. But to tell the truth once you are woken up by a pouring rain and, after taking the dog out, realise that your back lawn has turned into a swamp, there’s not enough motivation for everything mentioned above.

At the moment the sky is clear, but it’s so unpleasantly damp outside… I’d rather be scraping everything indoors - till the door knobs shine! I’m only joking. The day like today is for snuggling up cozily with a good book, for sipping hot tea, for enjoying an interesting film… Oh, and then the sun comes out and I feel so guilty – there’re so many plants that need repotting, so that when the winter comes they can ornate our rooms with those perfect shades of green.

“Repotting” is only one, but a very important item from my non existent list. Well, the list is real; it’s just that it’s not on paper, YET. It’s in my head, getting bigger and bigger constantly. I’m so scared of forgetting something that I can feel how the list is turning into a monster. I need to get in control. Definitely. All I need is a pen and paper…

And while I'm writing this it started to rain AGAIN - looking out of the window I’m considering putting “build an arch” as number one. This time I’m not joking. I've just found out that the forecast is like that for another 4 days. I guess the garden and my plants will have to wait after all...

In the last photo – leaves of my fragile pomegranates that have been grown from seeds. They have sprung so much, but at the same time look so thin and week. I’m really not sure how to turn them into proper trees.

$25 000

Have you ever wondered how to make $25 000 taking photos? Sounds like every photographers dream! It seems it has come true for Judith Stenneken, who has been announced as the Grand Prize Winner by the Blurb team (http://www.blurb.com/). I haven't been keeping an eye on the photo books, that have been submitted for this competition, so I can't say if there've been better ones, but Judith's "Last Call" certainly draws interest.

The photos themselves might not look anything special, but they start making sense once you discover where and under what circumstances they've been taken. Berlin Tempelhof Airport. Does it ring a bell? To tell the truth I'd say: No. Although it seems that once its main building was listed among the top 20 largest buildings on earth.

Anyway, now on Wikipedia you'd find that Tempelhof WAS an airport in Berlin, Germany, situated in the south-central borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. The airport ceased operating on the 30th of October 2008. Looking at any busy airport this would be hard to imagine, as these places always seem so full of life. And it's really hard to understand how one could become empty and deserted, just because it's impossible to think that there would be a day, when people would stop travelling by air.

That's what the author says about the book:

When I used to step in the main entrance hall of the airport, it always felt the same. In contrast to the stress of the city outside, this place was calm and relaxed. Although the airport was still operating, it felt as if the building was deserted and the only people who were there acted like extras in a movie: a man reading the newspaper and waiting for his flight, a woman from the ground crew standing behind at the check-in counter waiting for passengers to come. Nobody speaking, no announcements from the loudspeakers.

It was a place where time did not seem to matter. A place which slowly lost its function, where desertion had been taking place for a long time, where the future is still unkown.

For me this feels as if it's a script for some scary movie that depicts our future (too many people shouting about the end of the world). Well, make sure you have a look at the photos in the book that was worth so much money:

http://www.blurb.com/books/1561541

And if you are interested in what’s fashionable in the photography world at the moment, don’t forget to view the other winners and the runners up. The whole list can be found here:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/pbn-winners-10?utm_source=Emailoffer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=

I particulary liked Lauren Orchowski's "Rocket Science", Alexey Vanushkin's "Merry-Go-Round" and David Beach's "Fetzer's Tale" (recommended for cat lovers!).

Hope you can find inspiration in every single one!

Flower Profiles

We’ve been blessed with weather this weekend – it’s been sunny and warm (lets forget the short interval of rain early in the morning). Even knowing that there’s so much to do in the garden, I was fooled into thinking that all of these jobs can wait. I must have thought that the summer was back. I know it’s not, but still keep my fingers crossed that the weather stays warm right to the Indian summer in the beginning of October. Meanwhile everything’s fine – we haven’t had the first frosts and the flowers are holding on.

Here are the most stunning ones:

This was the first summer I grew zinnias. I was very lucky to see them in bloom as there was a time, when my mum wanted to get rid of them thinking they were weeds. I’m glad I managed to convince her that we should wait a bit longer… Now I’m sure I will be growing them again as their colours are so bright!

Zinnia is a genus of 20 species of annual and perennial plants of family Asteraceae, originally from scrub and dry grassland in an area stretching from the American Southwest to South America, but primarily Mexico, and notable for their solitary long-stemmed flowers that come in a variety of bright colors.

Their flowers have a range of appearances, from a single row of petals, to a dome shape, with the colors white, chartreuse, yellow, orange, red, purple, and lilac. They seem to be especially favored by butterflies.

Zinnias are popular garden flowers, usually grown from seed, and preferably in fertile, humus-rich, and well-drained soil, in an area with full sun. They will reseed themselves each year. Over 100 cultivars have been produced since selective breeding started in the 19th century.

Dahlias can be very pretty indeed, but the main downfall with them is that they need to be removed from the soil before winter. This can be annoying, but there’s also the storage problem – ours are kept in boxes in the cellar, we cover them in peat. And here’s the next bad thing – such boxes attract naughty cats…

Dahlia is a genus of bushy, tuberous, perennia plants native to Mexico, Central America, and Colombia. There are at least 36 species of dahlia. Dahlia hybrids are commonly grown as garden plants. The Aztecs gathered and cultivated the dahlia for food, ceremonies, as well as decorative purposes, and the long woody stem of one variety was used for small pipes.

I’m really impressed with begonias, they’ve been blooming on my window for nearly three months! And although, like dahlias, they have to be removed from the soil and kept warm and dry in winter, I think it’s worth the hassle.

With over 1,500 species, Begonia is one of the ten largest angiosperm genera. The species are terrestrial herbs or undershrubs and occur in subtropical and tropical moist climates, in South and Central America, Africa and southern Asia. Terrestrial species in the wild are commonly upright-stemmed, rhizomatous, or tuberous.

Because of their sometimes showy flowers of white, pink, scarlet or yellow color and often attractively marked leaves, many species and innumerable hybrids and cultivars are cultivated. The genus is unusual in that species throughout the genus, even those coming from different continents, can frequently be hybridized with each other, and this has led to an enormous number of cultivars.

Most begonias are easily propagated by division or from stem cuttings. In addition, many can be propagated from leaf cuttings or even sections of leaves, particularly the members of the rhizomatous and rex groups.