My early morning walk to open the back gate for Aaron displayed
various beds, yucca, evening primroses, Welsh poppies, petunias, hollyhocks, a bee using a bidens as a trapeze, phlox, agapanthus, gaura, a Large White butterfly on a verbena bonariensis, and lilies in the Rose Garden. As usual the individual images are labelled in the gallery which may be accessed by clicking any one and viewed full size by clicking the boxes underneath them then further enlarged.
Later, Nugget Junior 2nd demonstrated his prowess at darting to catch insects on the wing. We really hope he hasn’t seen off his Dad.
Before he left I printed copies for Aaron of a couple of photographs I took of him last week.
He really likes this portrait, as do I. “It tells so many stories”, he said. Most of my pictures of him go into an album which he could use, should he ever have the need, to advertise his work as A.P. Maintenance. This one will be framed and hung on his wall.
Our friends, Barbara and Adrian Chapman, sent as an e-mail attachment a copy of this well composed and executed oil painting by Adrian, based on one of my photographs and a Google street view. I particularly like his use of colour and the turn of the neck of the foreground pony, and am honoured to have provided the inspiration.
This afternoon I offered a certain amount of assistance to Jackie with the general garden maintenance. My tasks were dead-heading, pruning under instruction, and cutting up material for the compost bin.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s sumptuous savoury rice; spicy pork paprika; and pork ribs in barbecue sauce, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Squinzano.