Today's picture - meadow wildlife

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

It's so lovely we're up at dawn

Our meadow is so good right now that my friends from my camera club are eager to be here at the ungodly hour of of 6:30 am to give it a go. I've got two more people coming tomorrow morning. Coffee is on me.

You can see why we tend to do close-up work. There is so much natural exuberance that to get a shot that works, you really have to focus on details.

Today's guest photo: bergamot, also called bee balm, and here's why:

Photo: Margaret Grant (who also took my blog bio picture)
From me: another overlay, combining
a sharp exposure with a soft one
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

More meadow: My friends' pictures

I asked the gals who came to photograph the meadow on the weekend if they would like a share a favorite picture.

Ratibida group by Karla Bondy
Ratibida portrait by Sandy Barbour
And here's one from me from this morning - still experimenting with image overlays:

Dreamy Echinacea
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Today's meadow picture

A couple of gals from my camera club came early this morning, and so there were three of us in the meadow shooting the wildflowers. We started at 6:40, and were lucky that it didn't get breezy until 8 o'clock.

My picture of the echinaceas and bergamot is an image overlay created in-camera. (Certain Nikons digital SLRs have this capability.) What you do is shoot one exposure sharp and another out of focus. Then the camera's software lets you overlay the two images and adjust their luminousity. This is the effect. You can also do this in Photoshop with two images or just one, as long is you create an out-of-focus copy.

Me at play - thanks to Karla Bondy for the picture
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Stormy Saturday: more staggering rainfall

Pinch me, I can't believe we got so much rain this week.

Today's severe thunderstorm brought almost 1 and a half inches of rain. It was quite scary when torrential rain turned to hail for a few minutes and a hurricane-like wind whipped through.

I was out on the front porch with the camera when a particularly nasty thunderclap sounded right on top of the house, so I ran back in. I heard later that my neighbour was so frightened she went down to her basement. Amazingly, no big tree limbs came down here.

The view from the front porch during the storm
As someone who got shell shocked by last year's record dry summer, I wasn't expecting any better from this summer, especially when May and June started off almost as dry. So this soggy July, the wettest we've experienced in our decade here, is quite a surprise.

Total rainfall this week: a shade over 4 inches. That's more than we got all last summer. The lawn looks awesome (you can't even see the creeping Charlie, at least not in the picture). I've never seen the grass this lush in July. There's a lot of mowing in my future.

After today's and the week's storms: the lawn all greened up again
The semi-circular perennial bed after the storm
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

This summer and last year: what a difference

As you can see from the rainfall map that Agriculture Canada puts out, this season, which started out quite dry, is now nice and moist. The city of Hamilton, and areas to the east like Grimsby, have had too much rain recently, but here it's been just right. The excess rain of the past week has actually made up for the dryness we experienced before it came.

Compare that to last year's picture, which I posted here at the end of July, 2007, when we were in the midst of a deavasting drought:

The end result: finally a summer I can enjoy.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Scenes from our meadow

The meadow on our property is my favorite site for garden photography right now.

By nature I'm a night-hawk, not an early riser, but it's rewarding to get up at 6 in the morning and go out with the camera to capture the wildflowers.

I need to get up early because some time between 7:30 and 8am it gets too breezy to photograph. When the flowers start dancing, I go in for breakfast.

These pictures are from this morning and early yesterday. The dominant prairie plants in flower at the moment are the greyheaded coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), Echinaceas (E. purpurea, and E. pallida, the latter just past its prime), wild bergamot or beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) and prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya), above right, with Ratibida.

Prairie ballerinas: grey-headed coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata)
Purple coneflowers with bergamot
For more on our meadow and how we got it established from seed in 2000, visit this page on my website.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Lots in bloom here in mid-summer

I almost have to pinch myself. It's mid-summer and it's not dry. We had another thundershower yesterday which brought 3/10ths of an inch again.

This is what the garden looks like now.

Info about the metal flower sculpture is here

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Rolling thunder, one storm after another

Instead of the usual dreaded July drought, we are being treated to lots of rainfall. Last night's rolling thunderstorms - there were three in row - netted another 1 and 3/10ths inches of rain. It's quite the contrast to last summer's endless drought.

Our local paper, the Hamilton Spectator, reports that 80 percent of the rain that the city of Hamilton has seen so far this month fell over a three-day period from July 19 to 21.

The city did get a few more storms than we've had here. They've had almost too much rain. However, here just outside the city I'd say we had barely enough rain until now. The rain over the weekend and last night's thunderstorms have finally brought us really moist conditions.

Typically, the Spec reporter sees rain as a blight, and describes last summer's devastating drought as "relatively dry summer":

"A total of 250.2 millimetres has fallen since May, to the delight of gardeners but few others. Last year, a relatively dry summer saw only 93 mm dumped on Hamilton from May through July."

Well, what can I say? I'm a gardener, and, yes, I'm delighted with all the rain.

Toby checking out the high water at the creek which flooded briefly and covered our bridge early this morning
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

A great weekend of rain

Rainbow from two weeks ago
I was beginning to get cranky about the lack of rain - no rain for two weeks. On top of that we're in the middle of heat wave that looks like it's going to stretch through another week.

Then last night came relief in the form of 1 and 3/10ths inches of rain, delivered nice and gentle through the night. Today stayed humid, but remained overcast so plants and people (me at least - and also the garden club folks from Mississauga who came for a tour) enjoyed a respite from the heat.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener