Last day of July, can you believe it? Here in London we are back to 20 or so degrees and showers. Anyone who saw the women’s cycling from last Sunday on TV? That’s the kind of weather we have had more or less since beginning of April, just with a few exceptionally good days here and there in between. Summer? What summer? And what about August? Not looking any better I am afraid, the first 2 weeks of August is supposed to be, well you guessed it: showers with some driers spells in between.
Despite the weather my garden is doing well, although everything is very late. The last 2 months I have been filming now and then with my camera when I have been out taking pictures anyway, and I have put together a movie for you showing the best bits. I say the best; I had a really hard time cutting down the over 3 hours of footage as I didn’t want to bore you too much – it was a difficult job to choose the best bits, I wanted to show you everything! But I have been able to get the movie down to 4 min and 58 seconds so grab a cup of coffee and come for a walk in my garden :-)
The movie is saved in HD and will look best if you open it in full screen view, but to enable my readers to view my movies in the small YouTube size if they want to, the quality setting is by default set too low for full screen view. For absolute best result I recommend you to:
-Start the movie
-Click on the tiny gear icon on the bottom line to change quality and choose 1080p HD
-Click on the icon for full screen
-Push the progress bar back to start to get the movie to start from the beginning
(and when the annoying ad turns up, click the X inside the ad to make it go away). The ads are Google’s ‘punishment’ for when we don’t make our own music – that might be my next project :-) If you find that your Internet connection is too slow for 1080p quality, try 720p instead, or pause the movie for a moment so it can download a bit before you resume.
-Start the movie
-Click on the tiny gear icon on the bottom line to change quality and choose 1080p HD
-Click on the icon for full screen
-Push the progress bar back to start to get the movie to start from the beginning
(and when the annoying ad turns up, click the X inside the ad to make it go away). The ads are Google’s ‘punishment’ for when we don’t make our own music – that might be my next project :-) If you find that your Internet connection is too slow for 1080p quality, try 720p instead, or pause the movie for a moment so it can download a bit before you resume.
I hope you enjoyed the walk, the music was Andante from Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Until next time, take care :-)
Your garden is just glorious! I think your plants must be loving all the rain. And I was impressed how clean your roses' foliage is. You have a lot of color and beauty in your garden. Loved the shot of the cat, too! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Holley, my roses gets a daily wash with all the rain we have, the leaves gets clean but I have had a lot of rose bloom balling so it's a mixed blessing. My cat is always outside with me, hard to keep him out of shot!
DeleteReally lovely Helene - and the music is truly beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the walk in your garden.... your cat that is now a film star!
You are welcome anytime, and my cat says thank you for the appreciation too :-)
DeleteLove it! Your garden is simply incredible! You have so many plants that don't do well for me because of our heat and dry, clay soil. It was wonderful to feel like I was actually in your garden. :o)
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly why I make the movies, the photos tell a lot, but the movies are like almost being here. Glad you enjoyed it, and there are more movies from my garden - you can find them in the category 'videos' :-)
DeleteNice to have a sense of movement in the garden, something we can't get from photos. The only things we're missing is being able to enjoy the perfume of your roses. Maybe one day in the future...
ReplyDeleteWith the rest of my oriental lilies finally about to flower I so wish I could make movies with smell too! I guess you just have to use your imagination :-)
DeleteLovely, Helene! I feel like I was there. Your garden is in great shape, and it looks so welcoming with a gentle breeze blowing through it.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it, and glad you didn't see it all the days the rain was hammering down! But all the rain has done wonder for my garden, normally it looks pretty dry and with very few flowers this late in July. This year everything is so late I still have things coming into buds!
DeleteGosh, Helene! Every corner of your garden is exquisite! Every rose, every hydrangea, every clematis - just lovely! What a great idea to do this as a movie. And the music was so relaxing….Ahhh……...
ReplyDeleteSo happy you liked it, Astrid, and welcome back anytime :-)
DeleteThe music...well, that's a necessity to be honest, the garden might seem like a tranquil heaven, but I live in thickest East London, with traffic noise and loud neighbours, not to mention the fact that I live in a half mile radius of the fire brigade, police station AND the ambulance central! Needless to say the sirens are going day and night around here...so although I get the sound when I film, I turn it off when I edit my movies and put on some nice music instead :-)
oh what a neat idea to make a movie of your beautiful piece of earth. I Love it!!
ReplyDeletenow I have to figure out how to make one for my blog ;-)
I use my camera to take my movies, I don’t have a camcorder – although it is on my wish list! I take many short movie clips and download them to a folder on my computer and then I use Windows Moviemaker, free to download from Microsoft, to put the clips together and add music. I upload my movies to YouTube and link them to my blog posts. Using Windows Moviemaker is pretty straight forward, not many buttons to choose from, you’ll learn it as you go. Good luck, can’t wait to see your first movie!
DeleteI got to the video from a more recent post, and didn't get what you wrote here read first. I enlarged the screen, and now understand the reason there were moments where I got the wait symbol while the video briefly stopped. Still, I enjoyed it. That's a beautiful space you have nurtured! I love the dahlias. Your bench and table look like wonderful places to spend time, weather permitting, that is.
ReplyDeleteHi Sue, thanks for all the lovely comments you have made on my blog, sorry for not responding to them yet, but I have beeen in hospital for a week, I dislocated my hip! Will respond to you and everyone else as soon as I can, just wanted you to know because you have commented on several older posts too, thanks, really appreciate it - will be back, if not on my feet, soon :-)
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