Poppies, orchids and a pop up gallery

June got off to a good start with a short camping trip to the Gower in Wales. As is the norm with Wales we had some mixed weather that limited my photography a bit. But it is always nice to be away and somewhere a bit different. I managed to capture a series of nice shots from Three Cliffs Bay, which was one of my main goals of the trip. The Gower certainly is a beautiful spot and when the sun is out, the beaches are hard to beat.

Of course my Bucks Open Studios exhibition was a big part of June. Converting my house into a gallery and opening it up for three weekends in a row was a little disruptive. But overall the experience was good and I enjoyed meeting and speaking to all of the visitors. It was widely reported that the number of visitors attending the open studios was down compared to last year, but fortunately my sales did not seems to be affected too much by this. I just want to say thank you to everyone who came to visit me.

As I mentioned last month I find the summer months challenging, So I do tend to focus a little more on the smaller things like butterflies and orchids. The orchids seem to be having a good year this year, like most of the wild flowers. The butterflies seemed to have a bit of a hard time with the strong wind at the start of June. But the heatwave we had in the third week helped bring the numbers back up. Finding nice ones early in the morning whilst they are still asleep has been a bit of a challenge. So hopefully next month will be more rewarding.

The later part of the month was spent searching for poppy fields. It looks like farmers are no longer planting the lovely pink opium poppies in the fields in Oxfordshire, so I was only searching for red ones. After some fruitless searching locally I decided to head over to the Cotswolds one evening, and I managed to find seven fields full of poppies. The fields were all located fairly close together, so I really was spoilt for choice.

Here are my favourite pictures that were taken in June.