Christmas Wishes

And from our snowy winter in 2010:  it's great that our squirrel-proof feeders really are squirrel-proof, but they don't lend themselves to taking such good bird photos.

Happy Christmas and good wishes for 2016

On the way to work...

After all the rain, wind and what feels like grey skies forever, today was sunny and clear - and even offered a couple of photo opportunities. The three different sizes of truck making deliveries into the brewery made me think of Goldilocks and the 3 bears.

I loved the way colours were reflecting in the sign on the wall down near Heuston station. However, it seemed that when I moved so that the post wasn't in the way, my angle had changed enough that I wasn't picking up the same vivid reds, no matter how long I waited. I couldn't figure out if it was from traffic lights or car tail lights - but it looked great.

November Favourites....

The weather here has been so grey and dull that photo-opportunities are few and far between.
Instead, here are my favourite cards from November...

The sample, once I got over feeling constricted by the 2 1/4" squares, was fun to make - something I've wanted to do for a long time.

A New Leaf

We were dog-sitting this weekend. On our way home from shopping on Saturday morning (during a gap in the rain) we both spotted this unusual leaf fall. So cool the way the rowan leaf was on top of another solid leaf so perfectly. C couldn't believe I didn't have my camera with my - but the one in my phone isn't too shabby in good light.

Infusing

On our first blackberry-picking outing, I found a blackthorn bush tucked away in between all the brambles - and with the most enormous sloes on it. They were so big that I'm sure they were probably sweet and almost edible too, but I didn't get enough to want to even waste one - they are all slowly turning into sloe gin, along with another handful of regular-sized ones that I found on our second outing. After taking this photo, I finally started shaking it so as to let the sugar dissolve, but I always love seeing the colour slowly seeping out of the berries.

Foggy Sunday

Two lovely days in a row! We're having better weather just now than we had most of the summer. Sunday morning was bright and sunny, so we headed out to St. Catherine's Park in the morning. About 5 minutes from home we ran into the fog that I had seen on the weather forecast - but we still had a beautiful walk; there was enough sunshine to make it feel bright even through the residual mist. And it left all the spiders' webs in the hedges and trees looking suitable spooky for the day after Halloween. I could have taken way more photos of them than I did.

October favourites

It's felt like rather a blah sort of month, so I'm surprised that I could actually find several cards I liked enough to post here!

Bath Time

It was a mild day today, dull when I went shopping early in the morning but getting sunny and bright as the day wore on. In fact, we went out blackberry picking in the afternoon and came home with 2 3/4 lb blackberries and another handful of sloes to toss into my current batch of sloe gin.
Before lunch C was power-hosing our organic waste bin. It usually ends up being me who cleans it, because it's collected on Tuesdays and I can rarely wait till the weekend before using it again - it was a treat not to do it this time round. Anyway, while he was out in the back yard working away getting ready to clean it,  I went out to fill the bird feeders, and out of the corner of my eye, saw a robin fly into a pot tray that only has a couple of pots in it. He had a lovely bath - and I spent about 5 minutes watching him before I decided to risk coming in for the camera and hoping he would still be there. He was nearly finished - but here's a quick video of the end of his ablutions.

Hot off the needles

It's taken a while, because I didn't do much over the summer.
But the leftovers from Lorraine's lighthouse afghan have now become a sweater for C just in time for the colder winter weather.
There are still more leftovers, since I supplemented the original ones with a couple more colours, but I'm not sure I feel like making another complex sweater with them, and think I'll pass them on to the wife of one of my work colleague's, because I know she crochets.

And now it's time to get on with some Christmas gift knits!!

Starlings

I was coming home from work yesterday, and stopped to watch a large flock of starlings. I'm not sure what was attracting them to land, but there were so many, and so noisy! It was quite windy, so there's a lot of wind noise too - but in real life, the starlings were louder. Several times they all flew up and landed again nearby - I'm not sure what startled them. Once it was me, but I think perhaps it was also the seagulls and magpies.

Botanic Gardens ~ Sculpture (2)

There were several of these vivid red lily pads floating at one end of the lily ponds, each with its little nymph.

Also floating on the pond (and some had tipped over and weren't floating at all) were some cute little ducklings - just the sort you'd have in a bath!

This was one of my favourite exhibits - the title was something like "Live Streaming Nature". There were two comfortable leather chairs set under a tree, with the lily pond framed by an empty television set. The "room" was furnished with a carpet and accessories, and even some "home decor" attached to a couple of the trees.

The sunlight made it almost impossible to get a good picture of this lovely bird and his collection of junk - I took several and these are the best.

Another indoor exhibit - this was a fun one because the fish is articulated; at one end of the base there was a wheel which you could turn, and as you did, the fish and the ribs in the frame moved, as if the fish was wriggling.

Botanic Gardens ~ Sculpture

I'm so glad we went to the Botanic Gardens last week and didn't leave it till this weekend. After a week of beautiful sunshine we woke to a dull grey morning - and this time it wasn't just a mist which burnt off as the sun rose. Revisiting the sculptures as I edited some photos was good enough for today.

Some here, more to follow tomorrow.

This was C's favourite of the indoor exhibits; pyrography and colouring.

These flowers were in the main entrance to the Curvilinear greenhouse; made from recycled metal, beautifully textured as if they had been corrugated.

This might be the first year that we didn't buy a catalogue, so I can only remember a few exhibit titles. This one was easy to remember - Flotsam and Jetsam.

In the grass garden, a flock of birds...

From the back, I had thought that these were cracked eggshells, because we could see the birds in the background beyond them. But once we walked into the grasses, we could see that they were flowers.