Dried flowers and grasses

click photo to enlarge
There are a number of methods of flower preservation including hot air drying, silica gel drying, freeze drying and pressing. However, the most common, least difficult and consequently most widely favoured, is hanging small bunches in a well-ventilated area away from direct sunlight. We have a couple of vases of dried flowers and grasses. I'm no expert on suitable plants for drying but in our displays I can recognise lavender, poppy, yarrow and hare's tail grass. In the past we have had teasel and Physalis (Chinese Lanterns). I photographed  a detail from one of our vases as I cast about for a subject on a recent wet and dull day.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Multicoloured church flowers

I've noted elsewhere in this blog that one of the best places to find interesting displays of flowers is in churches. Many hold specific flower festivals where contributors are encouraged to be creative, often having to construct an arrangement on a specific theme. Other displays can be linked to particular times of year such as Christmas, Easter or Harvest Festival. Many churches have a rota of displays in key parts of the building, often created and tended by a rota of arrangers, with colours and arrangements carefully constructed on a theme or using complementary colours. However, occasionally we come across individual displays that are simply a riot of colour, as is this example that we saw in the church of St Thomas, Monmouth.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Clappers of the old ring

Many English churches feature inscribed bells that date from the medieval period and later. The bells and the structure in which they hang often requires repair and restoration. This must have happened at Great Malvern Priory in 1887 because in that year Edward Archer preserved the old "clappers" (the pieces of metal that strike each bell) of the ring i.e. the collection of bells, and mounted them on a display board with accompanying text, verse and decoration, all made from dome-head nails. If you look carefully you can see the date of each clapper - two are dated 1611, three are dated 1707 and one has the words "Virgin Mary about 1380". The display can be seen in the Priory porch.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Fireworks display

 "Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot". Thus begins the old rhyme, and remember it we certainly do at the annual Bonfire Night. Every 5th November fires are lit across the country, fireworks blaze in abundance, and people (well some) recall the attempt in 1605 by Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up the House of Lords and kill all within. Quite a few bonfires still feature a figure or effigy of Guy Fawkes but this aspect of the celebration seems to be declining. Large, spectacular fireworks displays, however, are becoming ever more popular. The photographs above are a composite of a few I took at a fine display in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Flowers and Cotswold stone

Pevsner describes Cecily Hill as "the grandest street in Cirencester." He is right, though my photograph doesn't show it. On my visit, the first to this broad thoroughfare, I was taken by the variety of shape and colour of the shrubs and flowers against the Cotswold stone of the Tontine Buildings, a twenty-three-bay terrace of 1802. The photograph shows that the absence of a garden at the front of your property is no impediment to a floral display, and if your neighbours are like-minded then everyone's work combines to great effect.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100