5 in 5 - Melanie - July 2017

Melanie is my friend who lives in Australia and she loves photography.  Every month since the start of this challenge Melanie has taken part in this monthly meme and as she doesn't have her own blog, I post here. I love that we have found a way for her to take part.

This month Melanie told me she was lacking inspiration so she took 2 sets of photos. Undecided which one to send, Melanie sent both and asked me to choose. I think you'll agree, both are winners!  Over to you Melanie:

"We are now in winter here in Adelaide with cold days (yes, sometimes during the day it drops below 10˚c) and sometimes barely a day passes without rain.  The rain I do not mind providing I am indoors in front of a fire.  It cheers me to take a walk around our garden when there is no rain and so  my 5 in 5 photos for July were taken as I took a wander around our garden with my camera catching the colour that greets me.  As it happens it is difficult to select just five photos from the many I took as colour is everywhere.  The five photos I have chosen are:-

• On the left of the photo a red kangaroo paw.  Over the years I have had many kangaroo paws as they are not a plant with a long life.  The name was given to it since the flower resembles a kangaroo paw.  It is a flower that has been adopted as the state emblem of Western Australia.  Here in South Australia the flower emblem is the Sturt Desert Pea which I have seen in the wild but never been able to grow in my garden.
• In the middle of my photo is a winter flowering Narcissus.  This flower greets me as I come out of my back door.  I have a small border there full of narcissus who never fail to appear despite the bed being neglected during the year.
• On the top RHS photo is the snowflake.  It is similar to the snowdrop which grows wild in the UK but is much taller and usually has several flowers on each stem and even petals on the flower.  They are a self-seeding flower and come up each year around the bed where our apple tree lives.
• The middle RHS photo is of marigolds.  I have clumps of yellow and orange marigold splattered around the garden popping up in the herb garden and veg plots as well as the flower beds.  They self-seed marvellously and there seem to be marigolds flowering throughout every season.
• My final choice is of the lily which sits by our fish pond.  Currently there is a mass of the white flowers.

I hope you have enjoyed at look at some of the colour in our garden but I am smiling to myself as of the photos I have chosen three of them have white flowers.  There were other colours for example my lavender and fuchsia are not white and there is a single lemon on our lemon tree. However I didn’t select these as my 5 in 5".

 "My 5 in 5 for July is showing off some of the cards I have been busy making during the past couple of weeks.  Card making is a hobby of mine which I have indulged in over many years trying to make birthday cards for family and friends and then Christmas cards for many of the same.  It is quite consuming and lately I have resorted to buying Christmas cards to save time during a busy period or just sending a Christmas email.  In July and August there are several of our family and friends who have birthdays. As I set myself to making cards I got carried away and now in my card stock should have enough to see me through to the end of the year which will give me more time to spend on Christmas cards.  Every year I promise myself to start making Christmas cards in August but it doesn’t seem to happen.  Maybe this year I really will.  So having explained my card making efforts here are five photo arrangements of some of the cards I have been busy making.  The top LHS shows cards for two nieces with birthdays in September.  One of them will be 18 and the other 17.  I always find it quicker if I make more than one card of the same design so allow the ages of these nieces is different I have used the same design.  This idea of using the same design for cards is reflected in the group of cards on the top RHS.  I used photos of flowers that I had taken and placed them under a frame cut on my cutting machine.  The bottom LHS cards use a flower or leaf theme.  I did leaf cut-outs which I used on two cards and the inverse of those cut outs I used with flowers on the other two cards.  The middle bottom photo is of several cards I made but because there are so many they may be difficult to see.  The final two age cards are again for nieces.  I have rather a lot of nieces and nephews.  These are mostly on my husband’s side as he has six siblings all of whom are married with children.  I just have two brothers".

Thank you Melanie!  It is always lovely to see a garden on the other side of the world, and who would think it was winter with so much colour and bloom?!  Melanie's card making efforts put me to shame. Once a maker of cards I find myself buying more and more. I should follow Melanie's example and set time aside for a making session, as the effort of getting everything out to make one card at a time means it doesn't happen. What about you? If you are a card maker, how do you plan and achive this?

Thanks for popping by, and I look forward to another post from Melanie next month. Meanwhile: 

If this has inspired you to pick up your camera and join in please go to the original post where you will also find out how to link in.

And to find out more about this monthly photo challenge, and how this started, please go to this post.