Rusty and Boots

 Here are some more of my photos that I've taken during the summer. They're mainly plants and flowers as they tend to keep still where as animals move a lot, mostly as you're about to press the button. :D  

These first two are a beautiful pale pink rose with water droplets on the petals. I don't know why I like droplets on petals and leaves so much. Maybe it's because they look like jewels and the sunlight shining through them creates gorgeous light reflections and colours. 

 

 A foget-me-not.

 Another rose.

I happened to see a TV programme last night about a Victorian lady called Marianne North. She was unusual for the time because she was an explorer, plant hunter and painter who travelled all over the world to exotic countries, climbed mountains and trekked through jungles to find and paint the plants she found. She didn't want to settle for the ordinary life of a woman back then and wasn't interested in marriage, preferring to live the travelling life and to do whatever she wanted.

The paintings that Marianne North created are absolutely beautiful, full of vibrant colours and were different from the botanical illustrations that had been done before as she painted the whole environment of the plant, not just the plant itself. She even discovered new species and had several plants named after her, unusual for someone who wasn't a botanist or scientist.

From what I heard on that programme Marianne North seems to be someone who was slightly ahead of her time. One quote I heard from something she wrote was to do with men of the time destroying nature far quicker than animals or earlier humans (she used the word savages) had done in thousands of years. That was back in the 1800s! I wonder what she would think if she saw the world today with all the pollution and destruction. She knew back then that the world needed looking after but it's taken many years for the majority of people to agree. 

It sounds as though Marianne was a fascinating woman, brave and determined and I encourage you, if you like plants and exotic places, or paintings to look her up. There's a gallery in Kew Gardens in London, which Marianne designed and had built herself, where her paintings are all on display.