The thing I like most about this charming and very very orange flower, is it's scrunched up curly-wurly petal. The thing I like least is my photography skills. WHY GOD WHY did I have to cut half the petals out of the shot? It looks very ungainly. Originally this was not going on the blog for that precise reason, but I'm so low on picture stocks right now that I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. Or possibly bouquet.

Oh well. Into each life some rain must fall.

So I've been racking my brains to think of something interesting to discuss in this post but unfortunately I have realised that I'm not very good at it. I have lots of interesting thoughts whilst wandering around the place, but few when sat at the computer. What I need is a dictaphone. Then I can be one of those people who strides around the place grasping a small black box to my face and shouting "NOTE TO SELF: TURN OVEN OFF" and "MUST BUY BINBAGS".

Ooh, binbags!

"What a dull topic!", I hear you cry. "There is nothing exciting about binbags!"

That is where you are wrong. Did you know that the binbag was invented by Herbert A. Resplendency-Potts of Wiltshire in 1894, after a careless servant dropped a lead dustbin on his foot? Of course you don't, because it's a huge lie. In fact, they were invented in the 1950s by three Canadians, who to the best of my knowledge had suffered no garbage-related trauma. But it's not such a good story.

Also exciting are the novelty Christmas pudding binbags which I recently came across in John lewis. I was extremely excited ...until I realised that I don't take out the rubbish. But one day, when I have my own house, my rubbish will out-Christmas everyone else's. Plus, even when it's not Christmas you can get these novelty goldfish binbags. Your neighbours probably won't judge you at all.

High Drama

A rather lovely and highly melodramatic rose, still covered in raindrops after a brief shower. I always find it tricky to get nice pictures of roses, and this took an awful lot of attempts, but I'm fairly pleased with how it came out! Worthy of a tragic romance...

Sunshine After the Rain 2: Sunshine Harder

I am proud to announce that I have worked out what this flower is! Exciting because these were some of my favourite flowers to see this summer, even though I found them really tricky to get a good picture of. It is a crocosmia, although I have no clue what kind. The damp kind?

Anyway, this website proved helpful in narrowing it down! Even though all I really had to go on was "it's orange" and "it's probably not a tree", we got there.

Sunshine After The Rain

I went on a trip to the local Botanical Gardens with my mother one day and we had the most peculiar weather. All in all it rained - heavily - on four separate occassions, but always at a relatively convenient moment; on our first trip to the tea rooms for lunch (delicious soup... tomato and chorizo, I believe, which I loved), then when we were standing right by the large greenhouses, then twice when we were back at the tea rooms, enjoying another couple of well-earned cups of tea. These gorgeous flowers (my mum told me their name and I promptly forgot. She would be very disappointed in me) grew all around the greenhouses, and when the sun suddenly emerged from behind the clouds, like an increasingly confident streaker at a public sports match, they looked fantastic, all damp and fresh from the rain.

Blue Monday

I'm going to make a terrible confession here and admit that I tend to write these posts well in advance and schedule them to post automatically. I know, it's cheating! But it means I can keep new photos appearing regularly even while I'm away or just extra busy. Or extra lazy, but obviously that never happens.

I was originally going to accompany this cheery vision of floral extravagance with an equally cheery aside about the Billie Holiday song of the same name which allegedly inspired huge numbers of suicides and was banned by the BBC. However, to my chagrin, I discovered that, in fact, said song was called Gloomy Sunday, not Blue Monday at all. Damnit!

In fact, 'Blue Monday' is the last Monday in January, allegedly scientifically proven to be the most depressing day of the year. Allegedly this was alleged by Sky Travel and the cough-cough scientific proof may have more than a couple of holes in it. So if you're reading this in January, fret not. Just go book a holiday, you'll feel much better...