Orchid Festival at Kew Gardens

With the torrential snow which has hit the UK in the last few days, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has found themselves dreaming of warmer climates. However, if a holiday to Australia (or the fiery pits of Hell - honestly, I'd take either right now!) isn't on the cards, I may have the next best thing for you - a trip to the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in West London.

"What?! Are you mad?! The whole nature of gardens is that they're outside!!"

Well thankfully not at Kew. In fact, Kew is home to some rather large, wonderfully temperature controlled, tropical greenhouses. Not only that, but currently their yearly orchid festival is on, so one greenhouse in particular is a riot of beautiful colours and smells.

Kew's orchid festival has been running for 23 years and this year, there's a particular focus on Thailand (which apparently is home to 1,100 species of orchid and to 10% of the world's flowering plants!).

Wandering around the greenhouse is a spectacular experience. Everywhere you look, beautiful flowers are there. Arches drip with orchid blooms and other plants whilst living pillars rise up, some even supporting mini pineapple plants! The smell is just incredible too.

The exhibition is very well put together - winding paths take you in all directions through the greenhouse so I felt a bit like an explorer, waiting to see what was around the next bend.

The center piece of the exhibition is a magnificent model of a Thai palace in the middle of a pond. The roof's covered with flowers and blooms burst through the palace arches!

Whilst walking around, I liked how the more 'permanent' exhibits hadn't been removed for the festival - before reaching the orchids, you wind your way through a cactus garden and inside the main exhibition, small side doors take you off to oggle carnivorous plants in all their boggy glory.

(Tangent alert: when I was little, I used to keep different kinds of plants in my windowsill. I started off with cacti - supposedly the easiest plants to look after. I killed them. Weirdly, some were over-watered, others dried out... My next obsession was carnivorous plants - I had a Venus fly trap, a sundew plant and two different types of pitcher plants. These boggy little terrors also met unfortunate ends. Next up was an orchid - this rotted in its pot! Safe to say, I am not at all green fingered, but you can definitely see why a greenhouse full of orchids, cacti and carnivorous plants appealed to me!) 

Eventually, I'd seen just about everything in the greenhouse (and taken enough photos to last me a life time) so I ventured back out into the cold... before quickly heading back inside another tropical haven - the Palm greenhouse.

This glasshouse was more interesting than I was expecting, especially considering everything in it was 'just green' - it housed different kinds of palms from all over the world and it made you feel like you were in the middle of the jungle! I especially enjoyed climbing the wrought iron staircase to gaze over the tree canopy. (plus, it was warmer up there!)

For me, visiting Kew was a pretty magical experience and it's definitely a resource I plan to make more use of going forwards. Visiting at Christmas for their light show was one thing, but it was another to see what they're best at - growing spectacular plants. If you want to visit, the Orchid Festival happens for just one month (Feb - March) while these beautiful flowers are in bloom and it really does have to be seen to be believed. Entry to the orchids is included with your day ticket (and it's cheaper to buy your tickets on line in advanced!). I think the festival ends on March 11th so there's just a week left to go see it but I would thoroughly recommend making the time.

Easy Steps to Saving the World

It's amazing how much a simple image can change the attitude of an entire country. However, that's exactly what BBC's 'Blue Planet II' managed to do with a shot of a whale carrying its dead calf in its mouth. The calf likely died of plastic poisoning and so this image has spurned a countrywide movement to cut the plastic.

Now, I know I'm not the most environmentally friendly person in the world. I don't always recycle - my flat is tiny and really does only have room for one bin - and my washing machine doesn't even have a 30 setting. However, the Post Blue Planet Guilt has set in and consequently, I've adopted a couple of simple steps which, with very little thought, make it easy to cut my plastic consumption.

(No whale photos I'm afraid, but here's a shot of a beautiful Costa Rican beach. Note the lack of dead sea life.)

1) Make the bag for life your new companion for life. I have a durable, reusable, (admittedly plastic) bag in my handbag at all times. This way, it's always on you and you don't even have to think before popping down to the shops. Sounds obvious, but it took me a surprising number of 'damn I forgot bags again' at supermarket checkouts before I trained myself to keep one in my handbag.

2) Get a travel mug! Again, sounds obvious but this one will go a long way towards making you an environmental friendly pro. For example, did you know that there are only three places in the UK where coffee cups can be recycled? So all that effort you've expended into putting them into recycling bins was probably wasted as most cups never make it to one of these three recycling plants. Initially, I 'tried to be good' by reusing my coffee cup and trying to keep to one throwaway a day. But in the end I realised this was just a bit ridiculous and popped into a TK Maxx on the way home and picked up a travel mug for a fiver. I could have spent even less, but I wanted a pink one. Now, I get to sit at my desk feeling smug, judging all the disposable cup using people. It's a good feeling.

3) Back to the supermarkets - y'know the fruit and veg sections? Forgo the little flimsy plastic bags you can pack your veg into and just stick it straight in your basket. If you're anything like me, those bags go straight in the bin when you get home anyway! If you have too much veg and you don't want it rolling around everywhere, try and hunt down those bags for loose mushrooms. For some strange reason, those bags seem to be made of predominantly paper. Not a perfect solution, but definitely a step in the right direction!

4) My forth and last tip is stop using plastic straws. Just sip your cocktail (or drink Champagne - no one does that with a straw!). Fine, it's a pain in the arse if you've freshly done your lipstick, but on the plus side, at least you can admire the colour if it's stuck on the side of a glass...

So those are four (hopefully super easy) steps to reduce your plastic waste. No need to be a complete hippy-eco-warrior, but little changes to our lifestyle can add up and make a big difference.

What tips do you have? Let me know in the comments!

Lomography: Baby Fisheye

About a year ago now, I was bought a baby fisheye lomography camera for my birthday. This is a miniature film camera that, using special film, takes circular photos which have a bulging 'bubble' effect. Now, I've been really cautious with using up the film as there were only twenty two shots on the roll and it's notoriously hard to get processed.  However, a little while ago I finally finished it and recently I managed to find somewhere to get it processed.

Using the camera was definitely a process of trial and error. It's not digital, so there's no way of seeing exactly what you're taking and the shutter speed was so manual that it was either set at 1/100 (fine for very bright, sunny conditions) or at 'it will stay open as long as you keep the button down.' This has lead to some interesting results to say the least. A fair few of my photos came out completely black (which is frustrating since it cost £17 to get the film developed!) where as others have come out so blurry I can't even work out what they were photos of! Some of the photos however have come out quite well- they have a very soft pixel-y effect which is definitely novel. Essentially however, more came out badly than well.

But I think I've learned my lesson. I know now for the future to:
1) Only really shoot in bright conditions- trial and error with the shutter speed is interesting, but definitely not worth wasting half the film on.
2) Make sure to wind the film on accurately! I found that some of my pictures were half in, half out of the shot and I think this was due to 'overwinding' the film.
3) Get close to my subjects. The camera instructions do say to do this, but I don't think I appreciated just how close they really meant!

I've decided that I'll buy some more film and have another go and see what results I get. Despite my results being far from perfect this time around, there was just something that bit more exciting about shooting photos and waiting (and waiting and waiting) to see what they'd come out like. And who knows, maybe I'll do better next time?

Baby Fisheye!

As I may have already mentioned, recently it was my birthday and I was lucky enough to  receive the cutest present ever- a baby fisheye lomography camera! I've seen the effect produced by this lens before and have always wanted to have a go myself, so this little beauty is perfect for the job. Not only that, but the effect you get from lomography pictures when they're developed is truly unique- they often show evidence of light leeks and and are over saturated. (Okay okay, this is normally not a good thing in photography, but since we're all digital now, it's exciting.)

Since I've only just become the proud owner of this baby and I have to wait to get the film developed, I haven't got any pictures to show you yet, but I promise I'll put some up in the future! Anyway, isn't half the fun of this kind of old fashioned photography waiting to see what the film comes out like?

Look how cute it is!! 

This is the film I have to use- it's extra small and can only take 24 shots, so I'm going to have to choose carefully what I snap at! The pictures are going to be very trial and error, especially since controlling the exposure time is done simply by holding down the shutter button for longer.

Here's a picture of what my photos could end up looking like. (This is just off the box the camera came in.)

If you've taken any photos using a camera like mine, please comment below with hints and tips- any help would be appreciated!