A baby sparrow being fed by mum or dad just a few metres from where I'm sitting.... in our East End London Garden.
More pictures here.
20040524 17:46
You remember that caterpillar? Well, I think this what the ones that don't get eaten by the birds turn into.
Looks rather like a leetle lobster to me.
20040522 16:58
There's alsways one who misses all the fun isn't there? This solitary beetle arrived today, long after all the action had finished.
20040519 21:14
Not much of a picture is it?
But then it's not our best looking pot of lillies. Yet strangely this ravaged collection is the place to be if you're a young lilly beetle looking for a bit of action. Over the last few days Zee and I have interupted 7 pairs and one triplet of lilly beetles playing errr...... leap-frog I assume.
20040518 18:39
Well, this is essentially the view from the dining room.... the Thalictrum aqilegiafolium (ie: its leaves look like those of an Aquligea) swaying gently in the breeze between two of the banana plants. But is this the best way to capture this light and fluffy flower? I hasten to add that they appear particularly fluffy to me due to my crap eyesight. You'll be not at all surpised to learn that this simple picture was not enough.... there's also the authentic as NiC sees it (soft focus), into the fluffy flower head, close-up of one head (soft), same again (but hard) and then finally a jelly-fish lookalike when the wind blew....
Share and enjoy!
All six together here.
20040517 17:21
My original reason for visiting Walthamstow Town Hall was to try out my new wide angle lens. But then I came across this little pile of young mallards huddled together on the concrete by the side of the fountain. Where there is water there will be ducks appears to be the message.
20040516 11:04
I have mentioned my fondness for the Aquilegia species before. This little collection brightening up even a grey day such as this..... and a second glance shows that this is a little family group with Purple mum, White dad, and Pink offspring. Eeee, it takes me back to first year genetics.
20040513 19:57
Not quite what I was hoping for when I took the shot (the fairy disappeared for a start), yet I still rather like this one.
20040510 6:34
"He's getting senile and repeating hisself!"
... is what you're thinking, I know. Pre-senility may indeed be knocking on my cranial gates but this is not the same caterpillar as last time. For that one was eaten. But it does appear to be the same species and once again it was found munching on my Brugmansia.
This is forbidden.
It is an ex-caterpillar, it metamorphosized into bird food.
20040508 17:44
Teen Dee is practising a White Stripes riff that she taught herself (I'm proud to say) on one of my guitars in the sitting room while I type in the kitchen/dining room looking out onto the garden. Such moments are wonderful.... parental and gardenial pride all at once.
Then she comes through and asks:
"Dad, how do you clean guitars?
Clean guitars, why on earth would this child with a bedroom resembling the set of nearly every post Acopolyptic film six days a week want to clean my guitar?
"You don't clean guitars darling, that isn't dirt, it's genuine 25 year oldrock'roll blood, spit and tears!"
"Whatever Dad, but how do you get it off?"
20040505 19:42
I like Aquilegia, for their promiscuity amongst everything else. They seem to seed themselves everywhere and even when the seedling ends up being a common "Nora Barlow" such as this, the fact that I didn't actually sow the seed in this corner makes it all the more special.
But photographing them is a steeper challenge. Do I go for all the flower heads as above, a close-up full frontal with chin slightly raised, a profile, or zoom in to the little spidey spinning its web between the petals?
They're all here, if you can't decide either.
20040502 19:10
I'm not a big dreamer. No, that's not right. What I mean is I don't often remember the dreams that I assume I have every night. Very rarely indeed. So recalling last night's one so clearly is very unusual......
I've always considered myself someone who knows my popular music history pretty well. I know it's not anything of great import but it is a subject in which I always assume I'm pretty well versed. So, when in the dream there was a magazine cover featuring half a cake suspended over two sofas and everyone else found it an hilarious pastiche of that classic Pink Floyd album "The Wheel" I felt a bit left out. I simply didn't get the joke. Protestations that I'd never actually got Pink Floyd anyway didn't ease the real sense of unease and insecurity. It came to a head when Zee saw the magazine and couldn't stop laughing...... (Zee's knowledge is enormous in many fields but in pop music I'd say I was ahead).
I woke up thinking "The Wall, it was called The Wall"... but I still don't get the joke.
20040501 17:54