Picture Perfect Project - July

Hi Honeys
It's July already!  Over half way through the year and of course onto the seventh post in the fabulous Picture Perfect Project too!

In case you don't know, the picture perfect project is a fun link up which encourages bloggers to take more photos, improve our photography skills and of course this enables us to improve the look of our blogs.  Did I mention how much fun it is?

I've been loving this link up!  When I decided to join in with this project, I thought I would try to chart a year in the life of our garden and hopefully be able to share some beautiful images with you along the way.  Not that I'm claiming any credit for anything beautiful honeys, I'm still learning how to use my camera so any beauty it captures is purely down to mother nature :) It has to be said though that even a less than perfect photo of a rose is still beautiful :)

This month there's been such excitement, and just two days ago, crushing disaster too in our little gardens.  Let's have a look shall we?
Do you remember the rose bush we planted in memory of my dear Mother in Law honeys?  Every year we would send two dozen roses to my sweet MiL, on her birthday and again on Mother's day. She loved roses as much as I do.  Well, in the fourth months or so since it was planted Mum's rose bush has grown and look what's happened now honeys...

 Yaaaaay!!! I'm so excited!! There are five perfect rosebuds all starting to bloom!  You can see their colour which is going to be a gorgeous, perfect red and as an extra bonus, a sixth tiny rosebud has appeared at the other side of the rosebush :)

Even seeing this photo again makes me smile! I really didn't think we'd have roses this year, so I get ridiculously excited each time I open our front door and look out into our tiny front garden and see Mum's roses starting to smile at me :)

The other rose bush, sitting alongside Mum's, is the one we planted in memory of my dear Gramma and just look at Gramma's roses smiling...

Gramma's roses are just stunning again this year and aren't they just the perfect shade of pink?

There is something about raindrops on a rose honeys...

 In the back garden I was thrilled to find apples on our little apple tree...

 We have another bumper crop of blueberries again this year too...

Unfortunately though, it hasn't all been good news in the garden this month.  Do you remember how excited I was to see two tiny, beautiful rosebuds growing from the cuttings I'd taken last year from a bouquet sent to me by my dear friend Miriam?

Here they are...  

I'm so glad I took these photos! I'd kept these cuttings inside over winter and in the Spring moved them outside.  Two days ago I went out into the back garden with Hubby and our furbaby Jade and something made me look at Miriam's roses only to see... horror!  The whole plant had been savaged!

This is what's left of those treasured and dearly tended cuttings...  

There are no words for how much this hurt me honeys.  I've fed and tended these cuttings since last summer and was so excited that they had started to shoot & even grow tiny rosebuds.  I have hopes though and haven't given up on them yet.  As you can see three of the cuttings are still very dark green and appear to still be alive.

I'll have to carefully snip off one of the shoots since it is discoloured and has died.  This is the one Hubby picked out of the lavender pot!  He found it and popped it back into the planter, bless him.  So, what savaged my much loved cuttings?  Hubby thinks it might have been magpies.  We do have a lot of them around here.  Whatever caused the damage, it's deflated me terribly.  Hopefully if I care for it the surviving cuttings will grow again.

There you have it then, honeys.  All of the fun (and drama) from our gardens this month :)  I can't wait to see what everyone else has posted for July!  Are you taking part in the picture perfect project? If so, do leave me a link so I can go read your post?

Thank you so much for visiting, do please visit some of the other lovely bloggers taking part in this fun link up?  Thank you too, to our lovely link up hosts, this is such a fun project to work on!  You can find them (and links to others taking part) here...

Beth at Our Pretty Girls
Courtney at Sweet Turtle Soup
Desiree at Macke Monologues
Elizabeth at Chasin' Mason
Stephanie at Wife Mommy Me
Whitney at Work it Mommy

If you've missed them you can find my other posts in this link up here:

January
February
March
April
May
June

Thank you again for visiting dear ones, it means more than I can say x  Till next time, when I have a lovely printable for you, smile lots and hug even more :) Huggles always xxx