Tag: Rose

Advent Market

Everything imaginable is on sale, delicious foods, jigsaws, Cotswold beers, British and French cheeses, hand-crafted items from socks to coasters, picture frames, baskets, and much, much more.

< Previous | Index | Next >

Click to enlarge

Image 97 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

This is Cirencester’s annual Advent Market, when streets in the centre of the town are closed to traffic for two days and market stalls appear in place of the traffic. Everything imaginable is on sale, delicious foods, jigsaws, Cotswold beers, British and French cheeses, hand-crafted items from socks to coasters, picture frames, baskets, and much, much more. There’s live music and it’s the time of year when the town’s Christmas lights are turned on for the first time.

Donna and I walked into town to see what was happening, we had sausage sandwiches and coffees for lunch at Hugh’s first, then walked around to check out the market stalls.

People love events like this, clearly. It was heaving with far more people than we usually see in town. All ages were represented, people came in from the local villages as well and it was so packed that it was sometimes difficult to see what was on display.

Here’s a short video clip to give you a sense of the atmosphere at the Advent Market. I had to hunt out a less crowded area on the fringe to record this!

When: 30th November 2024
Where: Cirencester Market Place

See also:
Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

A rose in the rain

Is a rose with raindrops on its petals any less beautiful than a rose with dry petals? No, in fact many would say it looks even better with a few raindrops on it.

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image 96 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Click to enlarge

‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet‘

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Juliet spoke these words of Romeo, his surname was a practical issue between rival families, but she loved him regardless.

Is a rose with raindrops on its petals any less beautiful than a rose with dry petals? No, in fact many would say it looks even better with a few raindrops on it. They emphasise its freshness, and they highlight its apparent fragility while revealing an unexpected robustness.

A rose in the rain is a lovely thing! I hope you like this one; I just had to take a photo. The cultivar is ‘Queen of Sweden’ and it was released in 2004 by David Austin.

When: 8th September 2024
Where: Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, England

See also:
Favourites

For convenience, here’s a list of my favourite images:

Anemone, Cloud, Honeybee, Hydrangea, Kiftsgate1, Kiftsgate2, Large White, Mugshot, Nelson, Robin, Rose, Spilhaus, Sunset1, Weston beach

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

Image of the day – 40

Nobody knows when rose breeding began, it may have been as far back as Greek or Roman times.

< Previous | Index | Next >

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

A beautiful rose at Powerscourt Gardens

While we were at the Powerscourt Estate, Donna wanted to look at the rose garden; this photo shows a really beautiful example of the flowers on view. Looking at the image now I can almost smell the fragrance in my mind!

Roses like these are not part of the natural world; they’re the work of plant breeders crossing a range of wild species and selecting for characteristics they liked. Nobody knows when rose breeding began, it may have been as far back as Greek or Roman times, but was certainly underway in medieval Europe and perhps in the middle and far east as well.

I wrote an article four years ago that includes photos of a much more natural rose. Comparing the two images emphasises how plant breeding can make huge changes (the breeders might say ‘huge improvements’) to wild forms. The same is true for animal breeding, just compare any modern breed of dog with the wild, wolf ancestor for example!


Images from our Irish holiday 2024

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:

28th Jul – Welsh Botanic Garden, Robin, Fishguard
29th Jul – Wicklow Mts, Glendalough, Powerscourt, Rose, Greystones
30th Jul – Liffey, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral
31st Jul – Newgrange, Battle of the Boyne
1st Aug – Monasterboice, Mourne, Thrift, Window
2nd Aug – Spelga Dam, Hydrangea, Pipework, Lough Neagh
3rd Aug – Coagh, Springhill, Portrush
4th Aug – Beach at Portrush
5th Aug – Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Portrush

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

A hedge of dead and dying beech?

Rose breeders … grow thousands of seeds and select those few with outstanding colour, fragrance, [or] disease resistance

It’s springtime, mid-April. and this hedge looks mostly dead. Just one of the beech trees making up the hedge is producing fresh, green leaves. All the rest are covered with dried-up, brown leaves left over from last year. What’s going on?

This hedge consists of seedling beech, they are all different in many ways. They grow at different speeds, some slower, some faster. Their leaves will vary from one plant to the next, some will be paler, some darker. Some will be hairy, others may be smooth and glossy. The bark will vary in roughness and colour.

When you grow seedlings, whether beech or any other plant, every individual will be unique, for uniformity you must use cuttings or grafts so that each plant is genetically the same.

What you are seeing in this hedge is variation in timing; the beech closest to the camera comes into leaf earlier than the others, but in a few weeks from now they will all have green leaves. Garden and commercial plants are often identical to one another and are given names to distinguish them. Rose breeders, for example, grow thousands of seeds and select those few with outstanding colour, fragrance, disease resistance or any other desirable characteristic. The best of the best are bulked up by grafting, given a name like ‘Yorkshire Prince’ or ‘Summer Festival’, and then sold on to garden centres. Grow roses from seed to plant in your garden and you are likely to be badly disappointed (though you might get lucky and produce a winner).

The term ‘plant breeding’ includes breeding for seed production, for example to produce wheat or bean or squash seeds of a named type. This is a different (though allied) process from breeding for vegetative propagation as with roses.

See also

A coffee is always welcome!