Posted in Uncategorized on February 24, 2013| 9 Comments »
Orange M&S Fairtrade roses from Kenya
“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December” – I saw that quotation in the Reader’s Digest when I was a child and have never forgotten it. However, only now do I discover who said it – Peter Pan author JM Barrie – although he himself thought he was quoting from another writer.
Anyway, I might add these days that “God gave us Fairtrade so that we might have roses from Kenya in February…”
We always have flowers in the (more…)
Posted in Horses, Non-digital archive, Photography, Uncategorized, tagged horses on February 16, 2013| 13 Comments »
Horsemeat butcher, Aix-en-Provence, 1990…
It’s only a picture. In this blog I usually aim to be non-controversial and I am very rarely topical. However, this old photograph has been sitting in my “miscellaneous” pile for decades and at last I see an opportunity to share it.
I took the photograph while on holiday in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France in the summer of 1990, using my old Ricoh SLR camera. Horsemeat is something we know it’s acceptable to eat in France, so I considered this image to be a snapshot of a different culture.
To those of you NOT in the UK, you may wonder (more…)
Posted in Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Nature, squirrels on February 10, 2013| 18 Comments »
Tail of a grey squirrel, February 2013…
This is a common view from my kitchen sink – the bird table is right outside the window and the grey squirrels (Latin name Sciurus carolinensis) like to dangle from it to eat peanuts or sunflower seeds out of the bird feeders. Sometimes they just hug the feeder and suck, so they get through an awful lot of the birds’ food.
They are rodents and some people call them “tree rats” and I think the above picture shows (more…)
Posted in Gardening, My garden, Nature, Uncategorized, tagged Gardening, Nature, Spring, winter on February 3, 2013| 26 Comments »
Lemon yellow flowers of Mahonia – this is a later flowering variety, while my others flower in early winter…
Suddenly it’s February and the gradual lengthening of the days has become noticeable at last.
Recently we have had rain and hail and sleet and snow and gales. But yesterday for once we had clear blue skies and the temperature felt almost balmy at 6 degrees Celsius. Just for one day it felt like Spring was on its way.
The sunshine makes (more…)
The Squirrelbasket 