Day 18 - Earth, Water, Air

A few days back MadamMtnLion commented about the logistics of providing water to all the plants in the gardens of Château de Villandry. It's actually pretty eco-friendly. They have a reservoir that fills up with water by natural means, and they reuse their water too. So providing water to the 150 000 plants really isn't the same troublesome deal here that it would be in other parts of the world where the climate is less forgiving.

The left picture shows the chateau as seen from a large pond that is situated in the highest part of the garden, and the right picture shows a beautiful set of steps that the water falls down though as it travels down towards the lower parts of grounds (on the other side of the bridge in the left shot). I like the curved pattern to it, it made it fun to compose pictures :)

/MrsHjort

Day 16 - Blossoms and Butterflies

Needless to say, there were many pretty flowers in the Château de Villandry gardens. Mr and I love places like that and ever since we bought our house (roughly five years ago) our interest into gardening has grown, so, naturally we now like visiting places like this even more. You just appreciate them better when you know how much hard work goes into keeping them so neat and tidy. Ours is nothing like this garden though, but we have become more and more like Hobbits, planting and replanting stuff each year. There's just such a sense of joy to watch things grow and become more or less what you envisioned it would be. I also love that the more flowers you have, the less room there is for the weeds to pop up between them. Win-win! :D

Today's bonus shot didn't get a before shot. I edited it so little it didn't feel like there was a point to it. It's som kind of mini bamboo looking plant that I've never seen before. It's very pretty, but I doubt it would like our climate. That's the pity about living as far north as we do - many of the flowers and bushed we love simply won't survive in our garden. Some will live if you tuck them in each winter though, quite literally - we put a soft weave over them to shield them from the wind. It's not pretty, but at least they survive to bloom another season.

/MrsHjort

Day 15 - Château de Villandry

Now for one of the more Disney-like chateaus ;). This one was only a stone's throw from the place where we stayed, and we hadn't planned to visit it, but our host recommended it very highly, so off we went. It was well worth a visit. Not only was the chateau beautiful, but its gardens too. It was quite hot that day so we went early in the morning and spent our times in the gardens before going inside to look at the interior. It turned out to be a good choice. I want out into the gardens after we had been in side to use my telephoto lens because it struck me that I hadn't done anything with it, but it was so hot I couldn't concentrate and the pictures didn't come out good at all.

The second and third shots are from the top of the tower in the first shot. The view was just marvelous from up there (and it was a bit cooler up there too). It was nice to get to see the geometric shapes of the plantings from above. All of the gardens had different themes, like "the kitchen garden" that dated back to the middle ages. It's actually the very last one remaining in its style - combining the traditional vegetable garden of the time with Italian influence that brought decorative elements like flower beds, fountains and bowers.

The third shot shows only a small portion of the gardens. There are 150 000 plants growing there and gardeners (ten!) work all year around, changing them out with the seasons on a rotation schema.

I'm glad we went here. Even though it ended up meaning we didn't have the time to visit one of the places we had planned to. It really is a beautiful place. And like I said, now we have a reason to go back :)

/MrsHjort

Day 24 - Climbing Rose

This is a Flammentanz climbing rose, it's just about the only rose that has been able to make it in our garden, so far. We've bought others, less hardier kinds, but each year, they've gotten smaller and smaller. I'm very happy that the Flammentanz is able to handle our harsh winters. I love roses.

/MrsHjort

Day 21 - Yellow Stonecrop

These are some of the most common plants in my garden - Sedum and Wild Strawberries. Mainly it's because they cover the ground very effectively. They perform a very important function because they help keep the ground moist and the fact that they are growing so strong themselves keeps the weeds from getting a chance to get a foot in the door. Plus, they look pretty, and the berries taste yummy :D

/MrsHjort

Day 19 - European Columbine

We have a lot of these in my garden. Blue, blue and white, purple, pink, pink and white... You know, the ordinary ones. This one is different. It's the only one that didn't come with the house. I fell in love with the dark purple color on one of our trips to the garden store, and I'm happy to say it's been thriving in our garden every year since we got it. I think I'll let it seed this year, hopefully there will be more of them next year :D

/MrsHjort

Day 16 - Blanketflower

Time for a color bomb. I just love the look of the Blanket flower, don't you? I have a few of them in my garden, but I never remember where they are until the blossoms pop - they are in the midst of a lot of other plants, which makes them hard to spot. The flowers are unmistakable though :)

/MrsHjort

Day 11 - Great Masterwort

We planted a new flowerbed this spring and this was one of its new inhabitants. I confess, I have been following the newcomers every day... a bit like a child before Christmas, going for a look every day to see how they are doing :)

These particular ones were a bit of a disappointment at first - when they started blooming, they were a pale green, not at all the lovely light purple that was promised. But as the days went by they gained more and more color. An interesting effect - the flowers I'm familiar work the other way around - so I'm happily surprised!

/MrsHjort

Day 8 - Rose

I love Roses, but they have never really worked in my garden up until now. These are of an extra hardy variety though, so hopefully (knock on wood) they'll be able to handle our harsh winters. I just love their soft color, don't you? :)

/MrsHjort

Day 5 - Peony

The Peonies have blossomed today. The buds have been growing slowly every day for weeks, but now they have finally opened up and they smell so lovely. We have them in several places in our garden. Most of them are pink but we got some wonderfully dramatic red ones this spring. They're too young to bloom this year though. So I have something to look forward to next summer. Not that I'm wishing away this one though ;).

/MrsHjort

CCC - September: Cool

These vines are actually from our garden, and no, they're not in a green house or in any other protected place. They're totally unshielded from the elements, right in the middle of our back yard, growing in a beautiful arch! Who would have thought it possible? Not me anyway... I never knew there were vines this hardy before - I do live in Sweden after all, but these vines are not only surviving, but thriving.

On to subject of photography... Back when I was a beginner I used to search for pretty subjects, groan at stuff that ruined the composition and move on (or shoot anyway and hope for the best). But experience has thought me that nature shots can be every bit as arranged as still life photography. This is one of those pictures. Grapes may be beautiful but it's super hard to find a perfect ones, and finding two perfect bunches of grapes right next to each other is next to impossible, especially when you need an exact angle, or the DoF will ruin one of them. Yes, I could do focus stacking, but I'd rather not! Fixing things the natural way is faster. So, the bunch of grapes on the left are really growing there, but the ones on the right are not. I hung them there after I picked them from an other part of the plant. Also, that little leaf above them both was placed there, in order to hide an ugly twig. And, last, but not least, I tugged at the leaves in the background to create a pleasing set of lines. It took som coaxing, but it turned out nicely. This picture even won my second golden CCC challenge trophy :)

/MrsHjort

Day 9 - St Mary's Cathedral

This is the beautiful Cathedral of St Mary. I never got the chance to go there during my last visit to Edinburgh, so this time I just had to. It didn't disappoint, going there was like love at first sight. I absolutely adored the architecture and I could have spent hours there, just experimenting with camera angles and composition. Unfortunately, we only stayed in the city for two days, and Mr was anxious to move on to see more things, but I managed to get a shot or two... or 50 haha :)

I have waited with this shot deliberately because I had to think about what to do with it. As you can see in the original below, the light areas of the sky were totally blown out and I had to create a (to me) whole new approach to deal with that. As usual the solution came during the night. That's when I came up with using the Clouds filter, and it worked! Yey!

On an other note, I'm happy to tell you that our work in the garden is nearing the end. A day or two more, and our garden will be tucked in and ready for winter. Yey! That means more free time for Mrs!

/MrsHjort

Day 7 - Castle Courtyard

Edinburgh Castle is lovely. There are so many things to look at there and so much history. Mr was very happy the day we spent there, the history lover that he is, and I marveled at the beautiful stone buildings and the rolling landscape. It was a great day.

And now for something completely different, a Scotsman on a horse! Nah, just kidding, though I do love Monty Python hehe, but I wanted to say that I'm sorry to Craig and Kim, for not keeping up with the commenting. I'll try and catch up soon, I promise.

It's a very busy week. Autumn is here and we have to prepare the garden for winter while the weather is good and there's still daylight in the evenings. We've been redoing the strawberry plantations completely. We're replanting all of them from the traditional sort of plantings to plantings in pallet collars. It's a lot of work, but we're half-way there now, and I love what we've accomplished so far. It's much easier to manage and it looks great too. Yey!

/MrsHjort

CCC - May: Mild

There are a lot of poppies in my garden, They seed each year and new ones keep on sprouting all over. That particular capacity is great, since they're not only pretty, but excellent ground cover plants too. They help me keep the weeds at bay...

I absolutely fell in love with the elegant lines of the poppy stalks this spring, I just had to do a shot like that for the calendar. Finding the perfect subject wasn't hard (we have a lot of poppies) and playing around with the shots in post-ed was a lot of fun. I've done quite a lot work to enhance the textures and bring out the different shades of green, yellow and turquoise. The end result makes this one my favorite of the series this far. A picture of three buddies, hanging out :)

/MrsHjort

Blossoms, Blossoms Everywhere

This spring may be late, but oh so lovely. It's been so long since I've seen this many blossoms in the trees. The weather is lovely and nature literary is exploding with colors. Wonderful! Unfortunately the weeds have also awoken and my back aches from pulling up what feels like a gazillion weeds from the strawberry plantation in my garden. If I had a super power I wish it was the ability to conjure away all the weeds... and the dust that gather inside my home haha - you wouldn't believe how fast cat hair gathers in the corners during springtime, when the cats shed their winter coats!

On an other note, I'm still having fun with the Nik Collection. In the beginning I played with it like a kid who first discovered Word Art haha, but now I'm trying to go for more natural looks. I have to say I'm impressed with what the software can do. It's wonderful how much detail the filters can extract from what looks like plain monotone areas, and I love the skylight filter, it's a life saver on cloudy days. The only beef I have with the software, is that it often creates a bit of grain in soft backgrounds. The reduce noise filter helps a bit though, but boy would I love it if I could keep the smooth soft background and still have that edge the Nik Collection provides. Oh well, you can't have everything I guess...

/MrsHjort

Chasing the Dream

Just like most little girls, I have always loved butterflies, and as a grown-up, I have always dreamed of taking that one perfect photo of one. To make things easier, we have planted four Buddleja bushes in the garden, or well, it's not only that they attract butterflies, they are very pretty too.

So, yesterday, I headed out with my trusty Nikon to chase the dream. I think it's becoming something of a tradition haha - last year I did the same, but then I used a tripod and remote. I figured it would be safer, but I found that is was hard to capture the fast, and small subjects witch such bulky equipment. It was hard to compose too, so this year I'm trying without them. The result is about 20 % sharp images - the ones when there was absolutely no wind whatsoever, the narrow DOF was just right and I didn't move an inch. So the ratio might be a bit lower, but the ones that made it were much prettier - it's better to compose yourself that to hope that chance will make the butterflies step to exactly the right spot you want them to be in.

Anyway, this is my favorite of the set, I hope you like it too :)

/MrsHjort

24 Pictures from One Spot Challenge

I love new challenges, that's why I joined W1K back in 2013, and it's a huge part of why I've stayed. Even more important though, are the awesome artists you meet there, and all the inspiration you get.

Today, thanks to Buffy, I've finally gotten around to shooting my garden. For some reason, it's hard for me to get around to shooting at home. I like to go places and shoot, but really, you can find loads of nice subjects in your own back yard.

So anyway, the challenge was to stand in one spot, without moving your feet, and shoot 24 different photos. Fun huh? It makes you look around more than you usually do and experiment with angles and composition. I shot all of the pictures with my Sigma 70-300 mm lens - I just love how flexible it is and the gorgeous bokeh you get when using a large aperture :). It's just the best!

Shooting comes quite natural to me, I'm usually very fast - that's the way you get to be when you have an impatient husband, who sighs loudly when you take too long haha. The time-consuming part is the post-ed. But, it's an oh so important part. Some sharpening here, some curves manipulation there, getting the levels right is important, and saturation is the cherry on top. About two hours later, and I'm done.

So, here it is, the fruit of my work, both as a photographer and gardener. I hope you like it.

/MrsHjort

Devotion

I never get to shoot Mr, seriously, I don't, not for real. Oh, I'm not counting those times when he "lets" me. No matter what we try, he can't help but look totally awkward and tense. Have you've ever seen the episode of Friends where Chandler and Monica are taking an engagement picture? Well, that's exactly what it's like! So for me to actually get a good picture of Mr... it's a very rare thing indeed.

Shooting Mr, involves stealth and a lot of luck. Fortunately, I have a lens that lets me get in real close from quite a distance, which really helps in his case. That way I can catch him off guard, when he's relaxed and unaware. I shot this from 20 meters away, and I got really lucky! In my eyes it's one of those pictures that really defines him. It's a rare thing to succeed with that... just a picture of him, doing such an every day thing as watering our garden, but with the same care and devotion that he handles most things in life. Mr is a very caring man.

We've been together for 11 years now, and I'm still totally crazy about him. He told me recently that an acquaintance had asked him how long we had been a couple. When Mr told him, he said that he never would have guessed - we're still as addicted to each other as we was when we first met, and that is what I really love about us! It tells me, that no matter if 11 more years pass, or 22, or 33 for that matter, we'll still be the same, crazy about each other, just like a couple of teenagers.

/MrsHjort

Planting Peonys and Killing Monsters

This month has been... unusual. On one hand, I've been very busy at work, and we've done a lot of rearranging in the garden lately. Today for instance, I've been hunched over all afternoon pulling out weeds while Mr moved two bushes and replanted some flowers. On the other hand however, this month has been incredibly lazy and hedonistic too, as both Mr and I delved into "the Witcher 3", gaming for hours and hours, enjoying all the little details of the world we both are so fascinated by. Boy am I lucky, I married a man who is just as nerdy as me!

So, about the game, for those of you who might be wondering, it's the best one I've ever played! One play-through easily takes 100 hours and though it may be filled with side quests, they are never boring, which is a mark of a good game. Compared to "Skyrim" for instance, which is an other open world game, the side quests are more motivating, more diverse, much more unpredictable and they play a more central role to the main protagonist Geralt. I'ts not just "run from point A, to point B, kill monster C, get D and return to get a reward", it's never that mundane. There is a real sense of motivation, of exploration and of building your character, not only in terms of getting more XP, but of actually getting to know who Geralt is. And the best part is that there are plenty of these little nuggets of gold in the game - even though I made it a point to explore the world thoroughly during the last play-through (I'm on the second one now), I still find new quests this time. Let me tell you, the game is HUGE!

An other thing that's really great is that, not unlike the series "Game of Thrones", the game is not about black and white, good and evil or any kinds of moral extremes. I love the fact that every choice has you debating and thinking things over. Very much unlike other games when there's really only one way I can possibly play, because, lest face it, I'm not a bad guy and I could never deal with the choices required. Nope, the game is filled with moral dilemmas, and I love it!

When it comes to the world itself, it's alive, really alive! It feels lives in, in a way I've never experienced in any other games. The people around you are like anyone you'll find in real life, there are greedy merchants, trying to suck up to you, there are bullies, who are just as annoying as real ones, there are smelly drunks and pious priests, intellectuals, scheming spies, poor orphans, gossiping women, cross-dressers, hard-working farmers, dimwits, maniacs, beggars, psychopaths, worried mothers, men's men, thieves, dandies, yellow-bellies, sad saps, know-it-alls and any other person you can possibly think of. And thy're all unique, with their own dialogue and appearance, each and every one of them believable. That is nothing short of amazing.

Finally, I have to say, that as a huge fan of Andrzej Sapkowski, who wrote the books the game is based on, as well as the previous games, I had pretty high expectations on the game. The previous two games were detailed in terms of lore, the voice acting of "the Witcher 2" was absolutely superb, the characters were detailed, the quest-line was very true to the books and the graphics was stunning. I wanted "the Witcher 3" to be like "Skyrim", but more detailed and alive, I wanted it to be like "The Witcher 2", but even more diverse and challenging, I wanted it to be like "Final Fantacy IX", but with an even more epic story and I wanted it to be like "Dragon Age 3", but with more detailed characters and more "soul". So, needless to say, I wanted the third game to be exceptional! I have to admit that I was a bit worried prior to the release - how could it possibly live up to all that? Well... the answer is, without a moment's doubt, YES! "The Witcher 3" is above and beyond! Wow! Just WOW!

/MrsHjort

Beautiful May

So, May is here, and the trees are blooming! This is one of my favorite times of the year, even more so now than before! Because, you see, this year is the vary first year that our garden has been "finished" (if there ever is such a word when talking about gardens).

So, this year, I get to see all our hard work paying off, and one by one, the plants and seeds that I've cared for awake and blossom in all their splendor. I cannot halp myself, I'm positively giddy haha.

Who would have thought that I would become so involved in gardening!? Five years ago my main reason for not buying a house was gardening! I've always hated it with all my heart.  But now, things are very different... Maybe it's maturity finally catching up with me (yeah who are we kiddin' haha!) or maybe it's because this time it's actually my own garden (most likely!), and I get to decide everything for myself (that's what I'm talkin' about!) but now, I cannot help but keep myself away!

So happy spring to you, and happy gardening :)

/MrsHjort