More Autumn Colour

In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.
[Lewis Carroll]



Autumn hath all the summer's fruitful treasure;
Gone is our sport, fled is poor Croydon's pleasure.
Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace,
Ah! who shall hide us from the winter's face?
Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease,
And here we lie, God knows, with little ease.
From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord, deliver us!
[Thomas Nashe]



Autumn

autumn is a clocks changing
and dark evening after school

autumn is shiny conkers
and seeing who finds most

autumn is leaves flikering down
into heaps on the roadsides

autumn is birds flying south
to escape the snow

autumn is football
and our team ready to win

autumn is deed leaves and windy walkes
bonfires and hot sausages

[Mehwish Shakeel]



 Once again the poems were found on the Poemhunter site - a searchable place with half a million poems, songs and quotations.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

I thought last week's puzzle photo would be difficult. The clue mentioning thinking digitally put some off as I hadn't even thought of fingers. It was electronic digits, ones and zeros I was thinking about. Also the colours sent others in the wrong direction. The object was hard to illuminate as it was so close, maybe 1mm, from the objective lens and tends to reflect all sorts of colours anyway. So - no gold stars last week though the thoughts of a glove or TV type screen were very good possibilities.

To put you out of your misery here it is - a CD. The pattern you can see are the minute pits burned by the laser when making the music track.

   



On to the new challenge. This should be a lot easier: Magnification about 100X


Clue: It is woofly the correct colour for once.



This one was taken with my new set up. Different microscope which has an adaptor to let me fix the 350D so I can hopefully get clearer photos. Microscope, lenses and camera were all bought s/h on ebay.



No prizes for a correct guess, just a bit of fun to start the week.

Gargoyles for Halloween

Having photographed the occasional gargoyle on the village church in the past I took the opportunity on today's afternoon walk to capture all that I could see. Halloween is not an occasion that my family has ever celebrated but these certainly brought it to mind.



Music is ' Funeral March of a Marionette', by Charles Gounod and often associated with Alfred Hitchcock.

Blue Tit, Coal Tit, Goldfinches

With the Sun shining on part of the garden it was a treat to watch the various visitors from the kitchen window today.

Blue Tit




Coal Tit




Goldfinches

Friday at the Flicks - Garden Bird Visitors, A Modern Scarecrow

A bit of a dearth of new video at the moment as the birds are eating less from the feeders during this mild spell and the dull grey skies are not conducive to clear photography. Anyway here are some of the birds which came to eat this week.

Starling
Goldfinch
Coal Tit
Great Tit, Tree Sparrow, Male Chaffinch, more Tree Sparrows



 Something I have been meaning to video for quite a while is a bird scarer / modern scarecrow which seems to do a decent job on a local vegetable patch. It doesn't really show well on the clip but the 'head' is made up of different sections some of which are holograms which really glitter as it turns round in the wind.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Aracnophobia

If spiders give you the heebie jeebies then this post is not for you.

Over the past year I have been surprised not only at the numbers of spiders around the garden but also their variety. Look closely at the gravelled area of the garden and one can be seen every few centimetres. Another favoured place is near the corners of windows. Here are a few, as yet unidentified.

One of the largest seen at about 40mm though much bigger if the legs were straightened out!




 This small one ( about 14mm) was disturbed in the gravel in the fruit cage.


All these seem to prefer windows.








It is only recently I have come to appreciate the variety of patterns on spiders. They can be quite beautiful in their own way. All the photographs were taken with the Lumix TZ7 with the lens about 60mm away from each subject.

Red is the Colour

Red

Red as the breast of a Robin
Red as the petals of a rose
Red as the rays of the evening sun
Red as a firelight glows
Red as your lips raised to mine
Red as a glass of red rich wine
Red as the dress you wore
When you promised to be mine

Thelma S. Pierce McBurney

The above poem was found on the Poem Hunter site

When I was looking round the garden while catching up on some Autumn pruning and weeding yesterday I saw just how much red was in evidence.

A somewhat fuzzy picture of a Robin Redbreast who wouldn't stay still.


My dwarf standard rose has decided it is time for a new flush of flowers.


It was not the only plant to decide that, in spite of the weather, it must be Spring.

Although some leaves on the Strawberry plants in the greenhouse are turning red...


... they are also producing new flowers and fruit.

As are some of the Raspberries in the fruit cage.


Who am I to argue that they have got their seasons all muddled up. At least it means I still have some fresh fruit to enjoy.

Just occasionally we get a bit of colour in the sky at Sunset. If only someone would demolish the telephone pole - but then I would lose my internet connection. Ah well, you can't win them all.



Yesterday was cool but gloriously sunny. Today we are back to normal though the rain did hold off until we had returned from our early morning walk.