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Category: photo
Earth from Saturn
The dark hedges
Not my pic alas, but one picked up from Top 10 Incredibly Beautiful Tree Tunnels via TPP. Photo credit is pawelklarecki.blogspot.ro.
The quality of light in the upper branches is gorgeous – the trees seem to be holding the light.
A photographic review of the year
January: Cold in Cambridge (but this is from early-Feb, since I don’t have anything terribly good from January. The best I can offer is smoke on the water).
February: early bees.
March: Phoebe. Our cat.
April: Petals on water.
May: Humble bumbles.
June: Stubai. The entire place is unbearably gorgeous. If you have a robust sense of humour, try this from the Franz Senn hut gents. If you have an even more robust sense, then this.
July: Summer in the garden.
August: Mallorca.
September: Chris’s wedding.
October: Amsterdam.
November: Winter head.
December: Cold again (from 2010. I don’t have any decent pix from this December. Just being soggy isn’t so interesting).
Oh, and Happy New Year to you all.
Refs
* The year in Stoats (2010).
Reflections
Summer in the garden
Its been very wet this summer, over here, in contrast to over there. A normal Cambridge summer features cracks in the ground and the grass fading; this summer all is a riot of green. I cut back the overenthusiastic hedge halfway down the lawn a week or two back, which has lead to the emergence of some kind of red berry plant looking luscious – better backlit, I think.
I also wanted to show you a gorgeous beech leaf but the delicate copper-red colour of the new leaf doesn’t really come through in the image; nor can you see the slanting light.
The bees are living in a sea of tiny pink-purple flowers which is folksy. Indeed the whole bottom of the garden is turning into an interesting and possibly successful ecological experiment in disturbance. It was heavily shaded; I cut down the elder and bramble in order to get the bees some sunlight; this exposed some near-plantless ground. All I’ve done is pull up the nettles and thistles and see what else grows.
This makes it look a bit like a wasteland, and it is a bit. Peer closely and you can see the potatoes – ah yes, I admit, I also planted some potatoes. But the poppies came of themselves.
Last are the houseleeks, which are Sempervivum if you speak properly. They got even better later but the weather didn’t. We first met them on the Tour du Mont Blanc, many years ago, and they were a complete surprise.
Oh yes, and we were visited by a little deer. Very cute, but it has been nibbling my broad beans.
Misc
* Watts stupidity is skewered by Tamino at 13.
* I went rowing – alas, not too successfully.
Petals on water
The shadow of Sauron
Hornet breaking the sound barrier
Isn’t it lovely (it isn’t new. The pic is from 1999 and I’ve seen it before. But seeing it on someone’s wiki page reminded me). Far better than a Green Hornet.
Or maybe you’d rather listen to the wabbit.
[Update: see various comments. The situation is more complex than I though, and possibly not fully understood. See-also cute pix here -W]
Cat on Roomba
We’ re recently acquired the second half of that vital twosome, the cat, to complement our Roomba. And so, here is a picture of our cat, Phoebe, on a Roomba.
Continue reading “Cat on Roomba”