The second Manchester alleyway of the week — this one known as Reyner Street. Proof that if given a foothold, and a bit of sun for an hour or so a day, foliage can flourish anywhere.
It’s that time of year again. You buy the seeds and put them in some mulch, and await the first shoots. Eventually some of them might turn into the thing illustrated on the packet. But that remains to be seen.
Not quite Wordsworth’s multitude but there are certainly a lot of these sprouting outside the Ellen Wilkinson Building on campus at the moment, something the rather random focus point of this shot is intended to capture. This is the 700th Manchester shot to feature on here, by the way.
A new place means a new ecosystem, and new flora. I have absolutely no idea what these babies (they are about the height of my hand) will grow into — cacti perhaps, but that’s just a guess. I don’t have a garden here as such; these are growing at the top of the rocky bank at the back of my house, that currently marks one of the limits of my world. But they’re something cute to look at, all the same.
Another day with not much happening. But at least it marks the end of the present stint of work — I am now off until the start of August. I doubt this will lead to any radical changes in the content of this blog, at least not immediately. Although it would be nice to see people feature more — there have been no people at all, even in the background of shots, for ten days now.
First trip to campus since March 8th, which as it was a Sunday, already had a desolate, end-of-the-world feel about it that the subsequent closure has cemented in place. On the few days over lockdown that I have visited, all of the city of Manchester has seemed like a coma patient. There is a certain amount of internal activity, things moving around from place to place, but there’s no real life or consciousness to it. This guy looks very much like he’s pondering his future and so should we all. Plants are doing well, though.
A day working at home, but it was grey and chilly and there was little motivation to head outside. I did poke my head through the skylight though, to see how things were getting on with the roof garden. It’s coming along nicely.
A few more months of this current climate and the whole planet will look like this. Sort of like the beginning of Interstellar. Or even if it does cool down, we’ll manage it anyway, by killing off the bees.
Every year around this time there will be some new shoots on one south-facing window sill or other, getting ready for the moment when, like good parents, we decide they can be let out into the outside world. Usually, they survive.
Taken just past the halfway point of a walk undertaken from my parents’ house this afternoon. The leaves are well and truly turning here and I did get a couple of good photos of autumn colours but this one I like because it seems less a picture of foliage, and more a picture of a moment, a burst of light captured by the water and trapped there.
Being 42 