Had a day’s work to do in London today, and walked through Trafalgar Square and Soho for the first time in years, but this was the winning picture today. Amanita muscaria – fly agaric – I haven’t seen one of these in years either. Sort-of poisonous, but people have been known to eat it anyway. No idea why. Taken in the grounds of Rose Bruford College in Sidcup.
Extraordinary harvest of fruit this year. I swear we have had 14kg, or around 30lbs, of plums off this one tree in our garden this year. At one point a huge branch broke off it purely because of the weight of the fruit, and the branch you see here is being artificially propped up to ensure it does not share the same fate.
‘”Nice weather for ducks”, they said. “Come to sunny Yorkshire”, they said. Well, this sucks. And all my friends have buggered off to Spain this morning without me.’
To say it’s been a good year for blackberries does not even start to do it justice. If it’s possible to become addicted to these beauties then get me into rehab, I’m a terminal case.
Incidentally, it seems that the bloke I got a picture of on Saturday isn’t Edgar Davids at all. Whoops… sorry…
Sometimes there are places — like this — that are less than five minutes’ walk from your house, that you walk or drive all around most of the time, yet never actually set foot in from one year to the next. This little wood clings to the side of a very steep hill, the trees grasping on for dear life with these claw-like roots, and the image of them as Ents (the walking trees from Lord of the Rings) was made that little bit more believable by catching flare in the lens as purple light above.
Ahhhh, Nature. Whatever the species, even kingdom, the aesthetics of sex are essentially the same.
It’s Friday. It’s another ‘dog in the pub’ shot. Here is Ellie, a (I think) border collie/doberman cross. A few months old, terribly cute, on her first season, not quite sure about the attention she’s receiving… I like the posterising effect on this shot and the fact that the shoe of Simon, her owner, has snuck into the background.
In our garden, this evening. It had friends. All contributed to a very nice, 100% foraged mint & wild strawberry source which I made to go with the lamb. I wish I was better at making food grow, to be honest.
Despite being there this morning as well Blackpool fails to trouble the blog at all, and may well now never do so. Here we are back in familiar territory, all enjoying a gorgeous day, including the Muscovy duck who seems to have stuck around for the last 18 months since it last appeared on the blog in far less clement conditions.
Here we are at the halfway point of 2013, more or less. I spent the first six months of it almost entirely away from home but right now I am in the middle of a comparatively long period here. Which means, as I have already posted 244 photos of Hebden Bridge on this blog (today’s becoming #245), finding new subjects is becoming more of a challenge. I will keep trying, however. On days where I do little but sit at home working it is a matter of spotting the occasional opportunity, like this one: the cat is just slightly out-of-focus, which is a shame, but otherwise I like this shot. It made its jump a split-second after I fired the shutter.
