Another day with very little to see, but as the sun was shining the garden once again obliges. These little red flowers are due to become green beans, and I believe that’s a junior version already curving itself attractively down towards the bottom of the picture. Vegetables and fruits of all kinds have done very well this year, even for a black-fingered (opposite of green-fingered) doofus like me.
A still life. Those who know New Order may see my point with the title of this post. But it is just a random flowerpot, really.
This big patch of daffs is coming into flower rather later than many others in the vicinity, but some confident early adopters have made a start on it. Actually I like this picture more for the bark of the tree, which looks very ancient and Ent-like. This is all in the middle of the UoM campus, not a space normally renowned for feeling rural.
Whatever happened on the 22nd February at 9.55am happened while I was in Dubai, so I do not know the details. But going on the location, at the junction of Booth Street and Mosley Street in Manchester city centre, the ‘serious collision’ was most likely between a car and a tram — something which really shouldn’t happen in broad daylight. The tram is never going to come off worse in such an encounter. One therefore assumes the memorial flowers — note the £3.50 price tag visible on one bunch — are for at least one occupant of the car. And their ghost keeps a careful watch.
(OK, actually I’m the ‘ghost’, but it does look a little eerie, and was something I did not notice at the time of taking the shot.)
I wasn’t flying from Cape Town back home, in case you were wondering, but instead to St Helena, for my fourth visit. Who can ever say these things for sure, but it’s possibly my last — put it this way, it’s the last, for now, for which I have the money, or rather, for which someone else has given me the money, in this case the British Academy (to whom thanks are due).
Whomever resides in this particular spot these days has definitely made their last visit to this remote little island, though. There are worse places to spend eternity.
A very pleasant day today, and these caught the light perfectly. And I got them in focus, too: there’s quite a long zoom being deployed here.
This is one of those occasions where a whole new location (the 479th, in fact) gets on the blog with a shot that could be taken anywhere. These poppies are currently flowering behind one of the stands of Brickfield Rangers FC, who play on the outskirts of Wrexham in north-east Wales, a town that had previously not offered up a picture in thirteen-plus years, and may not do so again.
There has been a considerable amount of travelling evident over the last two months, and it’s not quite finished yet: I have one more trip to make, coming up. But this week it has been time to settle in back home, and expect most of July and all of August to be much the same, I have writing to get on with. Meanwhile, though, a hole in an old bucket. It might not be in Canada, or Namibia, but it’s still something to enjoy.
They did seem like they were quite keen on the idea of making more of themselves, but I moved on before they got down to anything. Apparently these are white-spotted fruit chafers (Mausoleopsis amabilis). Apparently the St Helena Research Institute (hi Becky) would like to know exactly where they were spotted: so I tag these as residing half-way up the slope between the lower Munden’s battery and the one at the top of the hill, just above Jamestown. Ecologically, they’re not supposed to be here, but that is, sadly, true of a great many species, both animal and vegetable, that are now found on St Helena.
From blue yesterday to this vivid red (with yellow shading) today. Dampness remains a constant, though.
Being 42 