I try when I can to make these photos somehow epitomise the day, but this is an exception. I spent almost the whole day in a room interviewing job applicants. This is just a shot grabbed out of my office window, in one of the few bursts of light on this otherwise grey November Monday. But I like these natural feather dusters, Cortaderia selloana or pampas grass. Very 1970s. Then again so’s the building I work in.
Didn’t a creature looking like this once erupt out of John Hurt’s stomach? The end may be nigh.
I’m pretty sure this is the plant growing out of the wall down Keighley Road that becomes the purple spearheads of buddleia later in the year. Metamorphosis. I quite like both forms of it, actually.
Decided I’d better put in a photo from Manchester just to prove I do still occasionally show my face there. I know this sign doesn’t mean what it seems to mean, but there’s always something mildly amusing about this idiom. Each generation of kids anew must look around them in trepidation when they pass one.
It was also nice to depict an outdoor scene without a crust of winter over it. Quite a pleasant day in Manchester, in fact.
Today’s picture might have been of the Christmas markets being built in Manchester — but November’s not yet ten days old, for pity’s sake. A remnant of summer is preferable, even if it is mostly deceased. What it was doing out on this table in the afternoon, only the Contact Theatre Café knows.
Your word of the day — xylophage, from the Greek ξύλον (xulon) “wood” and φαγεῖν (phagein) “to eat”, thus, ‘wood-eater’ — referring to the fungus that has started, slowly, to consume this giant fallen tree down by the Hebden Water. Close up like this it looks like a giant cliff, hence the title of this post.
The sun is shining, it was a beautiful day. In such circumstances it’s great to have the garden to hang out in on an evening. Although I suspect this foliage is a weed — raspberry probably, which seems to grow everywhere except where you actually want it to.
After the beauty and interest and light of yesterday, today was a very dull day in all respects. Lucky this bush has bloomed in the garden to give the otherwise drab day some colour. If I was gardener enough, I would say I planted it deliberately in order to play this role every March, but nothing in the garden has been done with that much forethought, I can assure you.
This house plant is being carefully tended at present. With luck and attention these little buds should each become chilli peppers strong enough to have its seeds come with warnings regarding the desirability of industrial strength rubber gloves when handling. Bring them on.
