A vagrant in Iceland and my first half decent shot of this species.

I saw three Stone Bush-curlews at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. They are related to waders but they are actually terrestrial and found o...

Like father like son: Took this photo at the Botanical Gardens Toowong, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Noted for its scented flower

Cathy graduated from London Metropolitan University in 2003, after which she moved to Liverpool to take up a two year Craft Council Nextmove residency at Liverpool Hope University. In 2006 she relo…

If roses are your favorite flowers, how about taking inspiration from these Balcony Rose Garden Pictures to start a balcony rose garden.

De Rhododendron 'Curlew' is een laagblijvende dwergrhododendron die in de breedte groeit. De Rhododendron 'Curlew' wordt niet hoger dan 50cm. Het stevige blad is grijs tot grijsgroen. In mei bloeit de Rhododendron 'Curlew' met prachtige geelwitte bloemen. De Rhododendron 'Curlew' is winterhard en groenblijvend en is daardoor een kleurrijke aanvulling op uw wintertuin. De Rhododendron 'Curlew' komt het beste tot zijn recht in groepen, maar doet het ook prima als solitair op de hoek van een border of als bodembedekker. De Rhododendron gedijt het beste op zure, droge tot vochthoudende grond in de volle zon of halfschaduw.Bij het planten kunt u het beste Tuinturf en Rhododendrongrond gebruiken.

Council is working to protect the endangered Bush Stone-curlew.

A stunningly illustrated free-standing Angela Harding Curlew Christmas Advent Calendar published by Art Angels. Depicting two curlews in the foreground with a snowy cottage in the background and other garden birds perched on berry-laden branches. Just open the windows on the run up to Christmas and you'll reveal the complete picture! Supplied with large envelope to make it easy to send.

The rain keeps pouring down this morning but that's good news for the garden, the allotment and the water butts I suppose. Thanks for your lovely, lovely comments on my garden post which seems to have temporarily disappeared. Blogger is doing weird things this weekend. But a rainy day means time for getting around to those things I keep meaning to do. Its just we three this weekend, Woody is down Wembley way reporting on the Potters attempt to win the FA cup final. I have to confess to being on the black & white side of the city's football allegiancies but I'd love them to win for my dad and dear Grandad who followed them through the barren decades with no reward. Good luck Stoke. So we're pottering today. Making bed boats, eating lots of toast and generally mooching about. My main achievement this morning has been to put together this beautiful seed packet bunting which I won on the lovely Emma's Silverpebble blog giveaway a while ago. Now that I have finally posted my thank you to her I feel I can get around to showing this off. Aren't they beautiful, they're French seed packet labels which would look great backed onto small brown envelopes but I just couldn't get any in town so decided to put them up on their own. I've double backed them so that when the sun comes out again they'll look the perfect thing in the garden. Thanks so much Emma, hope you like your little gift and apologies for taking so long to post about it! And I've done a little framing too. My sister bought me some postcards from the London Transport Museum featuring old travel posters advertising Kew Gardens. This one she enlarged for me as foxgloves are one of my favourite flowers and matched with a bargain frame from Oxfam it looks perfect above my china cabinet in the kitchen. I love it! You can buy the postcards and prints online if you're interested While I was pootling about I realised just how many things I have featuring anenomes. Such pretty colours and simple shape, just like how a child would draw a flower. Emma sent me the cards in a beautiful anenomes tin that's so pretty it makes me smile. The tin also contained some wonderful flower seeds that I've already sown in my cut flower patch up at the allotment. Thanks Emma, you're so kind. She's a very talented silversmith and has the most amazing blog. Pop along and say hello! This little anenome jug was 50p and is not just pretty but is from Cornwall, so a double win for me! And I adore this embroidery which I found at the flea market a while ago. It lives on the mantlepiece and looks so at home with my old clock and Spode green candlesticks. Well, small boys needing snacks are calling so I shall leave you to the weekend and hope that you're dodging the showers and having a relaxing day. Xxx

This will be my second year year growing heirloom mums. The first year I had six varieties. This year I added 12 more new varieties to the garden, and fell in love with mums even more. These aren't your typical store bought mums.

Explore Chris Beee's 614 photos on Flickr!

At the beginning of September it feels like I let out a big sigh. I struggle with summer if I'm honest; the endless disappointing weather, hopes dashed, plans washed away in the floods. But September never disappoints and even surprises with balmy afternoons of golden light that floods the garden and burns away the morning's damp and chill. Autumn is my natural season I think. There's almost nothing I like to do more than snuggle in at home with my boys around me, the fire lit, something tasty bubbling away on the hob and time for quiet, gentle pursuits. Then there are the wild days of autumn to come that thrill me too. Days full of wind where the trees bend double, their leaves whipping across the garden, twirling and dancing as they fall. I love that mildly menacing air of winter knocking at the door. Sunday afternoon walks across the fields and into the wood are days for adventure, never knowing what autumn treasure you might bring home. I blame Brambly Hedge and all those books I read when I was younger of woodland animals busily preparing to tuck themsleves away for the winter. I'd make a good woodmouse I think. My garden feels like a bonus at this time of year. While the trees and fields are turning, my dahlias and asters and all types of daisies blaze away as the rest of the garden fades and they brighten up the table and the mantlepiece too. When I leave the office at the end of the afternoon I can tell the light is fading earlier each day, I love it. I like to see the lights come on in houses on my journey home; cosy sitting rooms, families at the table, people drawing the curtains and settling into their nests for the evening. At the weekend I love to turn on the lamps in the house when dusk falls and the football scores are coming in on the radio. On Saturdays we snuggle up together for tea by the fire with a favourite film and a tasty treat. A new cookery book is on the kitchen shelf (Nigel Slater's latest - and it looks great!), favourite woolly jumpers, knitted tights, cabled hats and scarves have been turfed out from cupboards and replacement boots and wellies are by the door again. The freezer is bursting with pounds of stashed away blackberries and my fingers are crossed for crab apples too. We've booked ourselves in for day trips to lovely Ludlow as ever, to Oxford and up to Richmond too. Some of our favourite places, perfect for pottering on a crisp autumn day and we've never had a wet trip yet. Christmas is already on the horizon, plans and ideas are forming and I have this special treat on my birthday to look forward to with a very lovely friend...definitely the very best time of the year!

Long-billed Curlew with a mussel photographed in late evening golden light. The photographer (I) had to get in the water for this one. Imagine sitting on your butt and have to hold still for the whole duration of the shoot. From the time I sat down to wait for the Curlew to accept me in its environment until the sun went down, it was about an hour or so. No tripod was used.

All day today the rain has poured and brooding, bruised looking clouds have scudded low over the fields. There were plans for a bike ride along a valley track with my friends but by 9 o'clock the rain had come and we decided to save it for a brighter day. Sunday stretched out ahead with lots of niggly household tasks beginning to pile up. Our new kitchen is fitted at long last, but it doesn't quite feel like home yet as there's a few things to finish (pictures very soon.) But then Woody lifted up his head and said "I thought we could go out for lunch. How about the Black Lion?" Bingo! Woody recently got the restaurant reviewing gig for the paper which is a very exciting but we're usually restricted to places closer to the city. But he know that the pub had already been photographed during another job so brilliantly we could have our Sunday lunch on the newspaper. Lucky us. And it was smashing. The Black Lion is a favourite pub of ours, all low ceilings, ancient faded black and white pictures covering the walls, open fire and a real range, decent grub and local ales, a serious darts league and rarely busy. Basically a proper village pub. Today it was just the cosiest place to be while the rain hammered down. We met a lovely American family who were staying in Leek to trace their family roots back in Butterton. They were great company and we talked about local heritage and industry and how the weather where they're from (Seattle) is just like here. Lunch was super. Good home cooking, nothing fancy, perfect. The boys wanted to try the pool table but I was itching for a stroll around this lovely village which is the place I'd definitely choose to live if we could. It's only a few miles from home and easy enough to get to town...one day! Luckily the rain has eased up so I had a lovely wander up and down the lanes with the dripping trees for company. There's is something about Autumn that completely captivates me. It's the textures, the colours, the scent of it. Everywhere woodsmoke curled from chimneys and hung heavy in the damp air. A week ago summer was still here but now we're firmly in my favourite season. This is the time when I almost want time to stop, or slow right down so I can enjoy every change, every day, watch the bracken rust away, the leaves burnish and the drama build. I love Butterton's different cottages, farms and houses. Some are new, some tiny, some rambling. My head's full of the most lovely autumn imagery now, it should last me all week! 

Use this tough plants for dry shade guide to find the best plants for dry shade. These drought-tolerant perennials, ground covers, and shrubs are the plants that tolerate dry shade.

Beautiful roses to cheer a cold, blustery day. I may have to make an early dash for home if the white stuff begins to fall here in Sheffield, if I'm going to have a hope of making it back over the hills tonight. (Yippeee!) A bargain ebay buy, these tiny cigarette cards are a series of old fashioned roses and I could happily have every one in my garden, if only I had the space. I'm not completely sure where they will find a home but I think they may appear in the corners of a few mirrors or picture frames, perhaps on a shelf, even on the bookcase. But I'll have to be subtle though because Woody has a pathological hatred of roses, mostly the planted kind - I must be careful. I think it comes from too much pruning as a teenage Saturday gardener. He even wants to put a stop to any in the garden but as he doesn't have a single green finger he can whistle! I think I can hide some in amongst the perennials and a climber over the garden shed should be ok, anything but those standards in the middle of a bed in the lawn that were my grandad's pride and joy. I can't wait to get into our new garden and start sorting. At the moment it's very square, very bare and very brown. Everything is in straight lines and really bland so this book has given me lots of ideas and inspiration. I think the author used to be the gardening columnist for Country Living, fancy me liking this book so much! What a dream, a border like this! My plot is rather small though so the ideas need to be radically scaled down. I'm pretty much a novice but I've made some plans and lots of lists (I love a list) of what I'd like to see flowering each month and as soon as the nurseries begin to fill up, my teeny monthly treat fund with disappear into their tills rather than ebay! Cow parsely is my favourite wild flower and this pink version will definitely be squeezed in Of course I could get ahead and plant some seeds but there is something you must know- I am rubbish with seeds. Much compost is bought, many packets perused, mulled over and savoured. Beautiful packets, brightly coloured and full of summer promise are neatly packed into my special tin and even arranged in date order for planting. Even the boys join in with the sowing and watering and wondering what will appear..... and then I forget about them until a couple of weeks later when someone knocks a tray of very dry and dusty compost into the kitchen sink and shouts "uggh what's this!" I know - useless! You wouldn't believe how often I've done it so no more. (Readers of this blog may have realised by now that I'm the sort of person who loves thinking of new things to do but might not really be the best at finishing them! I'm determined to have some finished projects to share in the near future though - I promise!) (This is top of my wish list - an oriental poppy called Patty's Plum) Fortunately mum is a bit of a plantswoman with overflowing borders that often need thinning out so lots of plants are on their way in the spring. At the old place we planted a bed together that flowered from May to October with just a bit of deadheading and watering required. It was completely glorious and I'm hoping I can do the same at No 25. This is what I'm aiming for so we'll see! Thanks ever so much for all the brilliant advice and hints about embroidery and especially the link to Primrose Design which has the most brilliant online photos of how to do stitches (thanks FK - fantastic!) You're all so kind and the encourgement means the world to me, (husbands I find don't really appreciate embroidery after a long, hard day.) I'm sorry if I haven't managed to write back to everyone individually but hope you'll take this thank you as your own, from me, from the heart. While I'm waiting for the vintage embroidery transfers to arrive I've been having a little practice on an old sheet. French knots (which I now know are what the little bobbly stitches are called - how embarrassing!) didn't prove too difficult and I've managed to do lazy daisy stitches to make flowers (going to be very useful!). It turns out that my bargain embroidery silks are too fine, even using all the threads they're too narrow for the look I like. I want something a bit woolly and chunkier. Oooooh - I feel a shopping trip coming on....

Does your garden need a little brightening boost? Most gardens run into the problem of certain areas, especially those partly sunny to shady spots, feeling