Author: Sarah

No time to lose. No, time to lose. Make time to stand and stare.... Did you see that?

Tall Poppies

Opium poppies pop up in my garden, unbidden. There are not many… well not enough for anyone to make a crop of the seeds anyway, nor to extract anything else from them….but they are rather beautiful in their papery fragility and they come up in serendipitous positions, along with the unexpected self seeded fennel, Aquilegia and foxgloves. There are of course other less welcome self seeded plants… but judicious weeding could sort them out – one day.

Now I’m off to trim the hedge. I may be gone sometime.

In the eye of the beholder

It can be very difficult to be a judge. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

On Saturday a version of this picture

won third place in a competition at the Village Fete. I was pretty chuffed. One kind person came up to me to say they felt mine should have been the winner!

Continue reading “In the eye of the beholder”

Unexpected or unusual reflections- 12th photo competition

The next photo competition is entitled: “a photo of an unexpected or unusual reflections.”
To illustrate my idea here is a tree in the glass of my car’s back window: you may have seen it before!

Continue reading “Unexpected or unusual reflections- 12th photo competition”

Nests

The aerial men came out today.
After months of a pixilated picture all broken up or frozen (on certain channels worse than others) we now have a new aerial, a boost box and clear pictures on the two TVs in the house. It wasn’t cheap, but I hope it’s worth it. We don’t watch a great deal of TV, but it is most frustrating when the one thing that deserves watching is in fact un-watchable because of a poor picture.

Whilst clambering on the roof the TV aerial man discovered that we have a wasp nest in the edge of the roof. The wasps didn’t appreciate his presence. Rather disconcerting for him. If it had been me discovering a swarm of wasps while I was on the roof I’d have fallen off. One good reason I’m not a TV aerial technician.

Anyway the wasp nest discovery explains the changed appearance of the wood on the porch. Continue reading “Nests”

An ‘exuberance of students’

What’s your favourite collective noun?

Collective nouns such as a murder of crows and a murmuration of starlings really amuse me.

Just wondered if there are  collective nouns for a group of  nurses, a group of doctors, a group of artists…. a group of policemen.
What would you call a  group of snails or a collection of ants?

Maybe you can help? Let’s make some up!

Or maybe you have a favourite?

Not a competition entry

I have found the idea behind the current photo competition quite inspiring, so although this isn’t an entry I thought I’d share.

We had a trip to the Oxford Botanic Gardens on Sunday:

This is a black pine: a detail of the trunk formation

Continue reading “Not a competition entry”

Well used or worn out?

This morning Scout went off with his little group on his  Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award

He had borrowed from school a suitably sized rucksack and bought it home the other night with his usual school bag inside it. It sat on the dining room floor for a couple of days, while the dining room table filled up with all the necessary items: sleeping roll, sleeping bag, saucepan, first aid kit, compass, torch, waterproof socks, and junky food being just part of it. Lots of fun-sized chocolate. You get the picture.

Prompting him to pack it on Thursday night to check it out didn’t bring any results. Then last night he started to pack, which was when he started to discovers its short comings. Continue reading “Well used or worn out?”

Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Mock orange flowers
shine white in the dark storm light
restless in the wind

The grey storm clouds surrounded us yesterday evening, but only  a few drops fell.  The wind has been blustery. The moon was hiding. Today has been changeable, and very wet at times (especially when I planned to repoint the patio)
Here is the end of my weather report. Continue reading “Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.”