A little of this, and a little of that

Took an excellent photography workshop with Therese Forte at the Toronto Botanical Gardens on Friday.  Thought I'd completely miscalculated the amount of time to get there in the a.m. when after sitting in traffic for exactly an hour I'd only made it as far as the exit to the airport - normally a 15 minute drive....  Loads of problems everywhere else apparently, but my route was a.o.k. according to the traffic gal.  It's at moments like that when I want my own Jack Bauer's Chloe to change the signals, open the road, and maybe even send me my own personal helicopter.  Fortunately the next 30 minutes of driving I made good time and got there with 5 minutes to spare.

I think I picked up at least 5 good tips that morning:  100 ISO for the best light/colour saturation; reminder about the rule of thirds; when the light is very bright, look for a spot in the shade to shoot from; tip lens into the flower blossom; and don't forget to spin around, sometimes you've got your back to the better photo.

Unfortunately didn't get to put much of this into action before I left the gardens, but here are a few of my snaps - what a great selection of Allium.

Now this isn't something I would have thought of, but I really like the look of the green seeds juxtaposed to the greeny/yellow blossoms of the Alchemilla mollis.

Tonnes of bees hard at work.

The only downside of the larger Allium is the way their leaves start to die just as the party is getting started up top.  I'd tried Sedum as well, but think the best combination I ever saw was a low-growing pink spirea - it really hid the mess.

Back at home as you can see, we got rain - lots of it.  The wheel barrow must have had 20 cm.  Some of the clematis I'd accumulated as small plants from other years are starting to come into their own.  Here's Clematis 'Angelique'.

It has a slightly thicker petal - and is a very pretty sort of mauve colour.

Just had to show you a bit of the latest Juergen Partridge design in progress on Gloucester - have a look at these trees - they were all brought in.

I got to speak to Juergen - actually he caught me fondling the limestone.  Told him how much I liked his work & he pointed out the trees (they're all new) and explained that it takes 3 years of preparation to harvest a maple of this size.

And, finally a shot from our first pool party of the season - not only was the weather perfect - the rain held off until dark - but our fabulous hosts brought in lobster from Newfoundland that had been shipped that very morning.  I confess I ate two, and as we were leaving we were given one more in a Ziploc for a lobster sandwich the next day.  Absolutely yummy.