Caldecote Open Garden

The weather was sunny with a gentle breeze yesterday for the first of two Open Garden days at Caldecote Old Rectory - a bit bright for photography but great to enjoy the wildflower and more formal parts of these wonderful garden.

Caldecote Old Rectory Garden

The Old Rectory garden in Caldecote is open this weekend for Coffees and Teas (10.30-17.30 17th and 18th May 2025). It was looking very good yesterday when I took a few photos of the wilder areas - plenty more to see including formal areas and a pond with water features etc.We walked across from Toft through the wonderful Buttercup meadows - the Yellow Rattle is already in bloom.

Hardwick Wood and Caldecote Church

 Our Cambridge Camera Club (and RPS Nature Group) outing was to have been to Waresley Wood but this was closed until the day so we relocated to Hardwick Wood, which in many ways is a better venue. It is certainly at its best and has the finest displays of  spring flowers for several years with all the species out together. Paul and I visited Caldecote Church meadow at the end for the Fritillarias and also a couple of bees. I was using mixture of focus stacking with the X100v and single shots with the 80mm macro. The bees are with the X100V (23mm). The third shot is with a legacy Olympus lens - I love the softness of this but found it too difficult to manually focus in the bright and contrasty light.  Last shot shows some of the group in situ!!

Shallow DOF Caldecote Church

We took a walk through the mud and flooded fields to Caldecote Church this afternoon. I was using a legacy Olympus OM 50mm f1.8 lens which gives very smooth backgrounds and muted colours.