Seen Around Town

I spotted this utility box art a couple of weeks back, when I was walking to get the coach down to Cork. It used to be much more of an abstract pop-art design. This new one is much more appropriate, as it's outside Smock Alley Theatre,  converted from a 19th-century church building, incorporating structural material from an 18th-century theatre building, and built on the site of the 17th century Theatre Royal, Dublin.

This is the mural that used to be on the side wall of a building I often pass on the way to work,

there are a few photos of it as a work in progress in THIS post from last year. 

Since the new Roe & Co microdistillery opened in the old Guinness power plant building, it's been replaced with this bird's eye view of Dublin.

You can see the Pigeon Chimneys on the left - the photo below shows them from the ferry as we left Dublin this summer. The building under them is the new distillery. I assume the river is the Liffey running through. The tall building is St. Patrick's Tower, as shown in THIS post. 

Fota Arboretum

C was away for some days - he left on a Friday morning, so that afternoon after work I got the bus down to Cork and spent the night with my sister - we had planned an outing to Fota Arboretum. We did have a couple of showers, but nothing that we couldn't shelter from under the trees. It was a lovely day out.

Here's a link to the album with most of the photos I took, I'm just uploading a select few here. We visited the formal gardens first. Not so formal now as they would have been in their heyday, there were four patches of wildflower meadow set into the lawns.
I was totally fascinated by the way the fronds of the cryptomeria seemed to start out almost fused, looking like a sponge or a coral, and then opened up.

Cottage Garden

Just a couple of snaps from my aunt's garden last weekend - Sunday was beautiful, and we sat outside much of the afternoon. The passionfruit and rose make a canopy over the kitchen window.

July Favourites

We were away two weekends in June - which did give me a chance to do an initial cull of holiday photos, but without my familiar editing program (GIMP), I didn't get to upload any holiday photos yet. I didn't make a lot of cards either - some days it was just too hot. But there was a plethora of birthday cards, including a couple of commissions in work.
Ethan's grandmother told me that he likes trains, bumblebees and the alphabet (he's going to be 3). This is what he calls a one-light train - a fast one. I think he spends a lot of time at the local train station, where they have both intercity and local commuter trains.

This month's header is a photo taken one evening last August in the park.