Spring is still springing

Down our front path, making me look forward to checking the mailbox.

Spring has sprung

It's officially a few days off still, but today just felt like spring.

Jasmine is one of my favourite flowers ever. I used to have a plant growing up the back of our house but it was a bad spot and it got sooty mildew and we pulled it out. Since it's meant to be a noxious weed here in Auckland (not allowed to grow it) I didn't replace it. But darn it, everyone else has it growing, great big freaking hedges of it in places, so I'm going to give it another go. Not sure if this bit I found on the side of the road will root or not, but I'm enjoying the flowers and I can always go back for more cuttings after they've stopped flowering.

Honesty...

...is sometimes always the best policy. Or so I'm lead to believe. I had a bit of a moan about my photos in the last post and so I thought I should probably come clean about what I sometimes do to them in case anyone actually thought that they were even half-decent because of my mad photography skillz. It's Photoshop baby, alllllll Photoshop. Well ok, I shouldn't be too modest, I take a pretty decent photo sometimes, I don't cut people's feet off, I know the rule of thirds, and that you should fill the frame. And then I Photoshop the hell out of it. Sometimes they don't need it but it's rare! Usually all I do is crop it a little, use curves to lighten it and sometimes unsharp mask to sharpen it up. Sometimes I get a weird colour cast and have to pull the reds out, or the yellows. But I don't usually get much fancier than that.

Over the weekend we went to my FIL's 90th at a really amazing old house in Bulls called Lethenty. Built in 1915 and totally my dream house with original William Morris wallpapers, a rambling backyard and Secret Garden type walled enclosures. In one there was a huge planting of Honesty. This is the original photo:

Meh. The reason I took it was because the sun was shining through all the Honesty in the background, and the seeds in the front had a lovely translucent glow to them. This is not represented in the photo, nope, no sirree nohow. I needed to show people what I saw, not what I actually took a photo of! So I lightened it, increased the yellow saturation, ran it through a Pioneer Woman action, sharpened it, lightened it again and cropped it down.

Much better. :) It still doesn't have the translucent glow in the foreground that I was looking for but I'm going to work on that. I gather that the pixellation effect in the background is called bokeh, which always looks fabulous but sounds vaguely like a rude word. However, you can safely search for it on Google so obviously it's just me!

Polyanthus

Spring primulas, originally uploaded by Hazelnutgirl.

Autumn's coming to Auckland, it's in the air. Still hot during the days but the nights are chilly and the viburnum is starting to turn. The poor old garden is frazzled from heat and the lack of rain, the lawn is burnt off and it's all looking pretty tired - except the hydrangeas. I took this picture of the polynathus in the spring so they will serve to cheer those of you still locked in to winter and daily anticipating spring and give hope* to those of us going into winter.



*Of course I'm totally misrepresenting how I truly feel about the seasons here - I loathe Auckland weather and in particular the summer mugginess, winter is marginally better but cold and damp, so autumn and spring are my favourites!

Weeds

I took a few photos yesterday of the weeds we picked on Sunday because they looked so lovely sitting on the kitchen table in the morning sunshine.

I don't know what these grasses are (and they may be native for all I know) but I think they'd make a lovely fabric print.



There was also a lot of Queen Anne's Lace and it's just so amazingly detailed and complex - not to mention in about 4 different shades of pink! Again, would make an amazing fabric print and I adore the Queen Anne's Lace pillowcase embroidery pattern over at Sew Mama Sew by Alicia at Posy Gets Cozy (one of my favourite blogs!)



I had some focus issues with these shots, I think my depth of field was too shallow and I ended up with weird horizontal bands of focus that looked awful. I obviously need to come to grips with using this technique instead of just doing it and hoping for the best. Miz Booshay I'm not :) Though I'd like to be because she can take a good photo and isn't pretentious about telling how she did it. And if you haven't downloaded PW's action sets for Photoshop from the link above then you're missing something :)

Hebe flower

Hebe flower, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

Yesterday Mat had to work so Hazel and I walked down to the lovely trail that runs along the harbour edge and had a picnic alongside one of the settling ponds there. We call it Lizard Island because the little bronze skinks come out to sunbathe on the rocks of the ford across the outlet. We stopped by the bakery on the way and Hazel got a gingerbread man and I got an apple turn-over which turned out to be an apple strudel when we got there and opened our little paper bags, and we shared a cheese and ham roll. Hazel watched for skinks and I took in the view across to the city, and down to the bridge and Rangitoto. It was very nice and even the gorse was looking its best covered in yellow flowers and making the air smell like coconut tan lotion. There's a line in a poem my Dad's very fond of that goes something like "golden furze, unprofitably gay", that's what it was. Then we went hunting for plants to bring home and draw. I felt a bit guilty walking home with a huge handful of various things but kept reminding myself they were introduced weeds one and all. All except for this little hebe flower that Hazel picked from a bush near the park. Tiny and perfect. We haven't managed to draw anything yet but we have it booked in for tomorrow.

Lawn daisies

Lawn daisies, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

There are fancier (and bigger!) flowers in the world but lawn daisies are one of my favourites. So many of them around at the moment, spring is definitely in the air!