A Walk in the Park

My photo assignement for today involved me going out for a walk which was just what I needed. Below is a mosaic of twenty or so minutes of the walk. The park is beautiful now-just perfect leaf crunching weather. I saw where they were setting up tonight's fireworks on Blackheath-lots and lots of them. We are not going though-we are staying in with the scaredy cats. I took my big camera so it was fun to record some of the park wildlife .
A magpie.

A grey squirrel enjoying his nut.

Crows spending time together.

A jay. I was most pleased with him as I love them and don't often see them.

The zoom lens worked a treat!

An energetic dog who is not exactly wild but is life!

Resting.

I Quietly Observe

This graffiti caught my eye as I was on the way home from greenwich today. I think it is a line from a Massive Attack song. Not sure if Kure wrote it-it does not look the same in style. This is the underpass where the graffiti is-my road is the other side through the light and a bit further. We once saw a burned out motor bike in here but it is not normally that dramatic. It gets graffitied regularly and cleaned up just as often.

I have a mystery plant in my garden. It first caught my attention a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was probably some kind of weed, but because it was on its own I thought I would let it grow and see what appeared. It has suddenly got much bigger. It has prickly leaves. Today when I went out to see it, I noticed a tendril curling towards the chamomile, and suddenly had the idea flash in my brain that it is a pumpkin! Is it? Do you know? I really hope so. It could be a stray seed from the few that have lain around quietly rotting over the last couple of seasons-it could have been tipped out of a redundant pot where one in particular lay for ages. As it has quite a lot of room I think it will do ok if the weather stays hot. We shall see!

I am intending to go for some kind of walk every day this holiday and so far have kind of kept to it. Today I walked to Greenwich, through the park. I chose a different route and so ended up walking past the beautiful long border outside the museum. I love this fennel en masse.

I got enthused over cooking today and made delicious beetroot soup from Sophie Dahl's book, and fruit cakes-the small one is to take to my Dad tomorrow as I am visiting. I had a slice after my soup tonight, and it has turned out ok. It is a simnel cake recipe with fruit soaked briefly in brandy, flaked almonds and mixed peel. I have been listing things on Ebay which is quite a lengthy process but I am enjoying watching what is happening. I am very good at buying things, I hope this transfers to my selling ability!

Growing

The crab apple blossom ('these red things', so called by Jayden) are ready to open.

These bristles are growing in Greenwich Park. That is how it looks anyway. An elephant's foot at the base of the oak tree I went to the park to draw.

The whole tree. A Holm Oak.

My drawings of the tree and a man who happened to walk near it as I was drawing. The man was skinny and wearing a very old looking suit. He had hair in little tufts either side of his head-a bit clown like. He was interested in the tree as he walked under it-touching the leaves and looking closely at something. Danny Gregory is very encouraging when it comes to talking about drawing outside. If I was him I might have gone and spoken to the man, but I am not! This is my first go-done from the safety of my car. I only had about twenty minutes as I went for a little walk on the grass to the tree first. I found some feathers which I picked up, with the possible thought of making a headdress for a fancy dress party we are going to soon-for the 21st and 18th birthdays of our nieces. I may make a snake decoration for a dress though, and be a snake. Andy might be a donkey-for which I might have to make ears. It is all very much up in the air at the moment!

Shadow Shot Sunday

Greenwich Observatory, shadows on the trees and one on the moon.
Long woman of Greenwich Park.

Hotel window at Crieff. The marks in the shadow that look

like water are from the wiggly, imperfect, old glass.

Shadows in the Winter Garden at Crieff. This is one of my favourite parts of the hotel.

It is lovely to sit here with your coffee and people watch!

Visit Hey Harriet for more shadows from around the world.

Parakeets, Balloons and Halloween Excitement!

Yesterday our friends Jessica and Simon came to London and we met up with them in Greenwich Park in the afternoon. They have two lovely children-Miles and Polly. We took them to see the deer in the park. We saw deer, magpies on deer, squirrels, a fox trotting by, pigeons, crows and parakeets. I love seeing these birds, I never get over the excitement of the strange call they have and their exotic green colour as they fly past. They are all around this area and I am sure I will see one in the garden one day. I took a picture-very far away, cropped it, saturated the colour and poladroided it-and the bird came out a bit green! The balloons are from yesterday too-some sort of mini festival going on near the bandstand. The other photos are halloweeny type things-it is the Halloween party at A Fanciful Twist this weekend which is very exciting! If you like dogs you should visit Vanessa at her magical home today as she has just got the most beautiful puppy!

P.S. I don't actually know what the last photo is of but I liked its ghostly effect.

More Snow

At the risk of being boring I am putting up yet more photos of snow. I love it!
Today was very bright and sunny and I went for another long walk-down to the river, passing through the local shopping park which was virtually empty, with many of the shops closed. There was a snow plough clearing the car park for tomorrow, for all those people who have been deprived of shopping for two days. This is my road at about ten this morning.

The beach-I like the horizontal lines in this picture and the way the snow stops at the edge.

These are flats right next to the river. These flats overlook the beautiful ecology park there.

A little moorhen on the ice. His friend below has an icy drip on the end of his beak!

I could imagine being in a Scandinavian wood at this point. The only people I saw when amongst all this beauty were a couple of dog walkers and another woman taking photos of the same snowman as me. Again, people were unusually friendly.

This is on the way back-the snow was really starting to melt.

I saw some great snowmen again today-this one is quite traditional.

This one not so much.

There is a definite trend for building snowmen on top of bins and walls. I liked the face of the one on the left.

This one is my favourite! He has his briefcase ready for work but is giving a cheery thumbs up as the snow has prevented him from getting there.

I liked this one's fruity face and rainbow scarf.

Tomorrow gets back to normal although I am not at school but on a course-'Forest School' which we are going to start at my school, once I know all about it. I am going on the bus though as the roads still look very slippery. My next post will be something different-not sure what but not snow! Though the odd photo might creep in here and there!

Snowy Day

The lovely snow has given me and lots of others a day off from work and a chance to get out and about and actually smile at people! There was a large snowball fight in my street this morning and a few communal snowmen being built! I like this Bob the builder with his traditional carrot nose. There was only a glimmer of sun for a while but other than that it has snowed steadily and been quite bleak. Lovely though! The red traffic light looked really vibrant against the grey.

I love these houses on the edge of Blackheath, whatever time of the year.

The crows looked suitably dramatic in the trees of Greenwich park.

Snow written with snow-an artistic teenager was walking a bit in front of me and was making patterns and this bold word on the wall with handfuls of snow.

This squirrel was the perfect creature for the amateur wildlife photographer as he very obligingly posed while I faffed around with my camera. He is probably eating one of the acorns I was searching for recently.

Here he is again on a different part of the tree.

This is the flower garden in the park-today transformed into Narnia.

Quite an ant like snowman.

A man on skis!

I liked the bright colours and the symmetry here.

A lot of the wrought iron gates I saw looked just beautiful.

The church just on the other side of my road.

My blue glass cat is looking especially pleased with himself today!