Memory book and macro pics

Another week plus has gone past since my last post, I can't keep up with things recently - the time is going so quickly.

I have been busy the last couple of days, working on a "memory book" as a gift from me and my two sisters to my parents on their diamond wedding anniversary. Sixty years of photos to look at, decide which ones to use, either photograph them or scan them, edit any which need it etc. We then had to fathom out how to actually design and make up the memory book - I'm using the company that prints my photos so we were able to upload the photos direct from my computer but that in itself took close to a couple of hours. My sister travelled down from London on Saturday and was here for eight hours! We were working solidly for virtually all of that time - and we are only half way through! So I have the rest of it to do, placing the photos and adding captions. I'm very tempted to order a book for myself - it was great looking through all the pics, brought back so many memories. But don't expect much in the way of posts this week either!

I'm still getting to take a few photos while Mary of Forest Walks fame is away on holiday, just local ones but there's plenty to take. Here are some of my recent favourites. The hoverfly was minute - barely longer than my little finger nail.

No ink and no art but more trips!

All my good intentions to start my robin this week have come to nothing, firstly because I have once again been out a lot and secondly my printer has run out of ink so I can't even print out a reference photo. I can't do anything without that! However I have had some interesting trips this week (NOT including the one to Southampton to buy an outfit for my nephew's wedding - how I detest clothes shopping), so I do have a few photos to show. This will get back to being an art blog soon, I promise! My trips this week were Braxton Gardens, Hurst Castle, The New Forest Reptile Centre and Minstead Church. Braxton Gardens are pretty little gardens just outside Keyhave so we were well placed when we had time to spare to catch the little ferry out to the castle. Hurst Castle saw us braving the steep steps and spiral staircase up to the roof, what fantastic views there are. Yesterday we went to the reptile centre as the RSPB had a large screen monitoring the web cam that's on the hobby nest(lots of interesting info from the expert there), but we also went around the reptile pits, peering in hopefully searching for the various inhabitants. We saw everyting except the smooth snake and the sand lizard. Again with a little time to spare we popped along to Minstead church, saw the grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the author of Sherlock Holmes) also the lovely stained glass. The pics from top to bottom are - bee macro, view from the roof of Hurst Castle, common frog, adder close up, Gatekeeper butterfly and the Robert Eberhard stained glass window in Minstead Church. I must add that the adder was taken from behind netting and a safe distance!