


I’ve tagged this “autumn leaves” because it is… although by now, having hung around for months, it’s more of a winter leaf. Not colourful, the way autumn leaves are thought of, because it’s from a kiwi vine, and they don’t do colour when dying. But on a January day with low sun and the ridged wood on the back deck bleached out, I think that very lack of bright colour becomes something kinda special.
What can I say? It has been raining a lot recently.
This ginko leaf fell onto the red Japanese maple leaves. I like the effect.
I really like the combination of shapes and colours in this photo; I was delighted when I downloaded the images and saw how it had turned out. It’s a ginko leaf, fallen onto a hose reel, photographed in between periods of rain.
Broadleaf maple leaves, that is. Just in case I hadn’t mentioned it.
And I can resume taking pictures of water drops on leaves.
We have (yet another) mystery plant in our yard. I thought it might be some kind of bergenia, but the leaves don’t seem to be right—they’re distinctly palmate, and the photos I’ve seen of bergenia leaves are distinctly not. In the spring it sends up tall stalks from its corms with sprays of lovely pinkish flowers—not a leaf in sight at that point— and then the flowers die back and eventually the leaves grow. It’s a big plant, the leaves are as big as those of the gunnera next to it (in fact, overall, the plant is bigger than the gunnera) and it stands three to four feet high.
And in the autumn, this is what the leaves do. Continue reading “The most amazing leaves”
Every once in a while my camera gets notional and resets itself to defaults—I haven’t a clue why, it just whirs and suddenly the flash is turned on again the next time I take a picture in dim lighting. Which is what happened here, with the result that the flash blew out the shadow on one side of the leaf. But I kinda liked the effect this time.
I don’t know what kind of tree this is, but it has really big leaves and they look really pretty when the sun shines through them.
We’ve had a lot of rain lately—good for the lettuce and our cistern, but there’s something wrong about wanting to turn on the heat in July (we resisted). However, we have had some sun, and these photos are the result. They’re backlit gunnera leaves.
Vanilla leaf is one of the first signs of spring, and it’s such a nice one, so bright and green and lush against the greys and browns left over from winter. So I’ve been taken lots of pictures of it—these are a few of the results.