Accord first early potatoes

Harvested the first of them today exactly 10 weeks after planting out the tubers. The taste will be all important. They should grow more if left in the ground a little longer, sadly all my three varieties of potatoes are in need of a really good drop of rain which is in short supply at the moment. My plot soil is free draining loam over a chalk base, and that applies to most of Eastbourne and the south downs.

My good friend Jennifer Hunter kindly sent me a mixture of nigella seeds last year and the mixed colours are a picture of delight growing across one allotment bed in amongst the pineapple mint the roots of which will need attending to soon.

The painted lady butterfly with the Canon 100mm f2.8 image stabilised L lens

I recently purchased a macro lens with image stabilising of up to 3 or 4 stops built in.

I wanted to be able to select a small aperture with a slow speed to enable hand held photos, I am not a fan of tripods for these type of pictures.

This enabled me to hand hold these two photos of a painted lady butterfly supping nectar on our pyracantha bush at f16  1/40th of a second ISO 200.

The second picture may be the one for purists but I like the first for the sheer detail in such a wonderful creature.

All the way from Africa

The lens with the hood attached useless for macro work far to close to the subject scaring the beastie and blocking the light