1.- We managed to get out yesterday, the first time Barbara has been out for some weeks – an invitation to visit our grandson, Jake, in Sheffield. His brother, Dillon was also theer and we brought him back home to the next village.
2.- Walking down to have lunch in the nearby park, I snapped this umbelliferous weed and was taken with the large size of the flowers (they are often quite small) – no idea what it is…
3.- but “weed” of the week – once prized for “carding” wool prior to spinning, is the teazel…
Also attractive as a mass planting…
4.- A less happy plant event (a hypograt) is this Silver Birch whose leaves are 95% burnt by the recent spells of hot weather. I hope it survives because I always park in its shade at the supermarket…
5.- Grateful for Yoirkshire Tea, which comes in a beautiful box decorated with scenes from Wensleydale (where the Cheese comes from). Yorkshire Tea is made stronger, for “hard” water areas such as is much of Yorkshire…
6. – The Poetry Postcard Festival is in full swing, I have sent just over half mine, so I am on schedule, and these are the ones i have received from groups 3 & ^ amd also from the International List – since there are so few non-Americans, we are listed additionaly, separately, for anyone who wisheds for the thrill of sending a postcard poem winging its way to foreign parts…
7.- I am not allowed to show you the poems themselves that I received, however, I can show you one of mine since I figure it will have arrived by now… This is near Kettlewell in the next Dale south of Wensleydale!
8.- It has not been too hot…
9.- Most of the pot plants in our garden have survived the heat and the wind -I am keeping an eye on the Wisteria though…
Ten Things of Thankful and all you good folks who sail in it…
1.- We have had some rain after days of strong sun or strong wind – which equally dry out the garden – even more critical when everything is in containers…
2.- The Stargazers are all open bar one and it is an annual marvel – especially for a flower that we more often see as a cut flower…
3.- I continue to be fascinated by this last Allium – by its slow development and by its morphology – it has now developed more pronounced florets on the underside whilst the to looks much the same as two weeks ago…
Two weeks ago
4.- I have, today, completed 32 out of 62 Poetry Postcards – the rest to be completed by the end of August…
I cannot show you the poem that was on the back of this card yet, but it was about the fact that all the posters on the many student walls, of Che Guevara, show him looking very serious as befits a revolutionary – so this smiling picture would not, I think, make the grade…
5. I am in the middle of another Speculative Poetry Mini-book and it is taking some work for such a tiny thing – watch this space…
6.- I talked to my Writing Critique partner yesterday – he and his wife have arrived in Eureka California for a few months before moving to L.A. for a few years from their home in Minnesota. Their cabin in the woods, runs in the Redwoods, sound divine, with deer at the window and other wildlife. The other evening, whilst watching a police drama on TV, the characters were smoking marijuana and suddenly they could distinctly smell skunk. At first they thought someone was smoking whilst passing nearby, but on opening the front door, they found three skunks gambolling outside lol…
7.- Barbara is no better but no worse…
8.- When I speak to my sister in Nova Scotia, every other week, she likes to hear me read one of my poems, so I typed up this one, and since it won’t appear anywhere else on the blog in the foreseeable future, i thought you might enjoy it… It was written in my Writing Group (on holiday break at present) and the prompt was to include a line from a favourite song…
Cause the Trees Don’t Need To Know
Trees, it turns out are no slouches when it comes to communicating co-opting networks of fungi intertwined with their subterranean roots to talk to their fellows “Salmon season is nearly upon us Gaia bless those little bears for dragging their food deep into the woods.” “Yes, bless them indeed they don’t even know what they do for us trees!” “I’m being attacked by those damned Leafcutter ants—anybody got anything bitter to make my leaves unpalatable to the little blighters – most obliged, dear neighbours.” “There’s a sapling here who’s struggling – let’s feed him up a little so he can make it till one of us old guys pegs it, and he gets his shot at the light…” Slow, thoughtful communications as befits elder statesman of the forest—unknowable, ineffable but now the threats come too thick, too fast drought, unseasonal snow, floods and forest fires there is little we can do now too late to intervene so let us whisper these perils quietly when we walk in the woods ‘Cause the trees don’t need to know…
1.- The lilies are flowering – this group 0f Stargazers now top six feet high and are scenting this corner outside the front door…
2.- Grats and Hypograts… On Thursday, I set out for work and at the roundabout where I turn onto the dual carriageway, I gunned the engine rather too suddenly and rounding the corner, I heard something snap.
Luckily, I was able to roll far enough from the roundabout to be reasonably safe but I nevertheless got out an stood well away from the car.
After a reasonably quick recovery, my local garage said they couldn’t look at it until halfway through this week due to staff shortages, they did look underneath and confirmed, as I suspected, that the drive shaft had snapped.
My daughter, Beverley, was off on holiday for two weeks to Ireland with her newly (early) retired husband Don who has just left a very stressful job. She agreed to lend me her car and put me on her insurance (£41.00)
On my way to catch the train to see the dental student in Leeds, I filled the car up with £50 of petrol only to find that the student was ill and hadn’t booked in the appointment and then, on getting home, had a call to say that they had fixed the car already, although it was going to cost twice what they had initially suggested since drive shafts are usually sent off to be refurbished but in this case, as it was actually broken, that couldn’t be done (£380.00)
I was glad to collect my car the next day since I hadn’t really liked driving Beverley’s car – the clutch seemed slack compared to mine, and Beverley will refund the petrol since I didn’t use more than a thimble full… All’s well that ends well and I am resolved to be gentler when accelerating – diesel engines have a lot of torque power…
3.- Whilst at the station, I noticed this nicely framed view of our lovely surrounding countryside and include it for you delectation…
4.- Also at the station, I paused to photograph this bank of self-seeded “weeds” – simply amazed at how many different species there were…
5.- Whilst at the garage, I was intrigued by this unusual vehicle. I am not really a petrol head, in fact quite the opposite, but having briefly owned a VW T4 campervan, I do have a soft spot for the breed. It turns out, this one was built in the ’70s by a company called the Jurgens Caravan Company. VW made a specially strengthened chassis’ with a cab only and Jurgens built a caravan onto it. This particularly rare model with the “Luton” box over the cab, was released in 1977. Pretty good shape for a vehicle made when I had just left university 49 years ago…/
6.- Barbara has not left the house for two weeks despite my best efforts – I am going to have one last go after finishing this, to get her to go out even if it is only to the supermarket to do the week’s shopping – she could then choose her own meals…
7.- The Poetry Postcard Festival is going well – due to being on two lists and therefore having 62 postcards to send, I need to complete 8 each week and have now sent 24! This week, still on the cyanotype kick, I have designed some cards to illustrate poems about famous people (Photoshop, get a picture, fiddle with contrast, posterise, turn black and white, turn negative, make cyanotype) and although I can’t show you the poem as it hasn’t reached the recipient yet, I will eventually be posting them on the PoPoFest Facebook page and I will show you this particular one in a month or so…
8.- This practice of gratitude (not forgetting hypograts) and the support and encouragement that all your lovely comments give me…
9.- Although we have plenty of sun, there is cloud too and a breeze so its not too hot and so far we don’t have a hosepipe ban yet…
10.- found ten grats and am now allowed to go visiting others…
1.- The slow-growing Allium flower has now reached it’s final size and fully coloured up…
2.- Talking of slow-growing plants that require patience – we have had this Yucca? for at least 15 years and this is the first time it has flowered – clearly worth waiting for…
When is a weed not a weed?
3.- We live on a backstreet and a bloke from the council comes around with a weed killer spray at least once a year, but this is not really enough to keep the weeds at bay and perhaps also, with this year’s weather, the weeds have flourished but some of them are too pretty to be considered weeds and so the answer to the riddle is “When they are garden escapes!”
This one I think is Lavateria
No idea what this one is but I award it “Weed of the Week!”
This one is surely a garden escape – some kind of Campanula?
4.- This weed may have struck terror into the hearts of those of you who garden, even in a photograph, or brought on apoplexy, and you may feel that it is inappropriate to allow it anywhere near a gratitude, but i have a sneaking admiration for Equisetum, or Mare’s Tail since in the Carboniferous period, it grew to the size and form of rainforest trees and composes much of the coal that formed then…
5.- This plant is growing in a garden, indeed has been deliberately planted by a neighbour, but it grows wild – hence a weed and so is the opposite of a garden escape lol…
I think it is a Mullein if not a Great Mullein?
6.- Grateful for Municipal plantings…
Who doesn’t like Lavender…
7.- This butterfly was, I’m sure, grateful for this (weed) Thistle, of some kind…
Not bad for a phone camera…
8.- I awoke to the rising sun reflecting in a tiny beam from the neighbouring houses and striking the net curtains in my bedroom, which have a rather nice pattern of birds, leaves and bird-cages and the sunlight has melded the curtains with the garden plants seen beyond…
9.- My grandson and his girlfriend have just moved into their own flat in London, he is a Doctor and she is P.A. to Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) so they have been able to afford somewhere in London which is quite a feat in this day and age. They have long desired a large painting of mine of a box of fish in a shop doorway in Naxos and so I have given it to them as a house-warming present. it leaves a large hole in the painting array in my bedroom but I’m sure I will fill it… I used to paint so infrequently (still do really) that I hung onto paintings as if to remind me that I still could, but I am learning to let go now…
10.- The Poetry Postcard Festival has begun and somehow, I hav been put on TWO lists and I can hardly withdraw from one so I now have 62 cards and poems to send before the end of August. Good job I have picked a simpler theme of printed cards this year…
Another Cyanotype print – this one near Kettlewell nearby in the Yorkshire Dales. The effect is rather as if the photograph is taken in moonlight…
A random music like which popped up on my Spotify playlist and which I am grateful to a friend for introducing me to…
Have a great week y’all – hope it is neither too hot, too wet or too windy where you are…
1.- Back on the subject of weeds – below is a battle royal between Bindweed – its flowers evenly spread as it climbs the factory fence and is like a poor man’s Morning Glory, and Japanese Knotweed the dastardly invasive weed – I would say that at present, the Bindweed is winning, but Knotweed can grow through concrete…
2.- Back in our own garden – I told you last week, how slowly this Allium grows and here you can see it starting to colour up…
3.- Meanwhile, the bulb season long over, various bits of colour dot the garden…
4.- On Friday I had to go to Leeds for my Dental Students – as always , the second week with new students is deep cleaning which i grin and bear, but I enjoy the walk across Leeds for the sights on the way…
Just opposite the station is a plaza encircled by these comely maidens alternating Morn and Even – this is Morn…
These statues were erected at the very end of Queen Victoria’s reign and I wonder if she would have disapproved of such nakedness – the back of the plaza has a much more serious line of VIP’s associated with Leeds who stare across the plaza at the backsides of Morn and Even…
FYI, Morn and Even are about 2/3 size…
5.- Further on, in front of Leeds Library, giant chess is in progress…
…and for lovers of a different kind of sculptural birds – here are some cute owls…
6.- The likes of Elon Musk have been spreading fake news about the lawless nature of Great Britain – not realising that even our right-wing yobs require a more nuanced form of gaslighting than some members of the MAGA base and such fake news, mostly falls flat here – or so I thought until I saw this sign outside the Polish shop where I buy sauages most weeks…
7.- My late Mother’s birthday was on July 4th and my younger sister Helen’s birthday is on the 8th which made them easy to remember – as well as to remind me to wish my American friends a Happy 4th July and I hope you all had a great day! I got a certain something off in the post to Helen – no spoilers as she sometimes reads these posts – and I am hoping the Gods of postage will deliver it in time. Talking of post, the Poetry Postcard Festival lists went out yesterday, only for me to discover I am on two lists! I can hardly back out of one of them now, and I don’t mind doing twice the number but it is quite expensive when sending a mere postcard, abroad costs £3.60! Thank goodness I am not doing as complicated cards as last year (original paintings for each one) but am doing cyanotype and lino prints – watch this space…
8.- My copy of Miski’s poetry book has arrived today – well it was yesterday but UPS delivered it to 31 and not 31a… Looking forward to reading it!
9.- Grateful for this community of grat folk…
10.- Glad not to be having to water the garden but there is presently no sunshine to make my Cyanotype prints lol…
In honour of the Leeds statues, here are some othe Bare Naked Ladies with a favourite track…
Sensitivity Warning – there are a lot of plants in this week’s post so Hay fever sufferers, read at your discretion…
1.- Our Olive Tree seems to have loved the weather this Summer has seen fit to throw at it the heat waves alternating with rainy days and has produced a bumper crop of its tiny flowers – whether these translate into olives remains to be seen – the conversion rate never seems to be that high – but meanwhile we live in hope!
2.- I promised you some Cyanotrope prints in last week’s post and yesterday, I duly unpacked the flower press and made my first prints – I think everybody starts with pressed flowers and grasses…
But I also made a giant negative in Photoshop by first turning a picture black and white and then inverting it and printing it onto transparent inkjet film – the resulting negative can then be used to make a cyanotrope print…
A Winter’s sky in Elounda, Crete
3.- We went out on Saturday, to Harlow Carr Gardens in nearby Harrogate. It is run by the Royal Horticultural Society and offers interest all year round – even in winter with illumiations…
Barbara, pretty in pink and echoing this rose arch that leads to a sub-tropical garden…
The thing about big gardens is that they allow for big drifts of a single species – so here, as Clark would say, are Something Someting…
and this drift of Someting Something Alliums…
Not the prettiest coloured alliums but unusual and like a tiny city of Fairy mushroom houses…
This one I know – Sea Holly!
4.- Of course its not all flowers that are worth seeing – below some interesting architectural ideas – -possible projects to beautify the estate, Clark?
Fancy stonework forming a bridge over a stream…
Fancy woodwork…
An insect hotel complete with a living roof…
And a classic living roof on the bike shed – lots of Sedums I think…
5.- There are always amusing names to be seen…
Sneezeweed, apparently…
6.- Back in our own more modest garden, I have often noticed how weeds can get to quite a size before we notice them providing that they resemble the plants next to them. The left-hand picture below shows my favourite Allium, I only have the one bulb, and it grows slowly, to a prodigious height and when it finally colours up, it resembles a large Loganberry. Behind it to the left and in the right-hand picture, is a grass and I cannot decide if it is common (and therfore a weed in my book) or an ornamental grass – either way, it has a head almost the same size as the allium and I was late to spot it and put it on “weed-watch”…
And talking of disguises – here are some cacti disguised as Yeti…
7.- Enough of plants – I am grateful for the thoughts that comments provoke and last week, Clark, yes, him again, asked, in the light of my modded “Mod” scooter picture “So, tell us… your youth, Mod or Rocker? (my money is on your being (or at least sympathizing with) the Mods?”. Well, I struggled with this, to all intents and purposes, I was neither – not as in belonging to or dressing like either cohort. I don’t really appreciate those tight suits the Mods wore though I appreciate the ir desire to look smart at weekends after shitty jobs during the week. On the other hand, I also have a sneaking admiration for the Rebel Rockers. Truth be told i am not much of a joiner of groups and my sister yesterday told me that neither is she, and that she is reading a book “The Gift of Not Belonging: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners” which looks at explore the distinct personality style of the otrovert ― someone who lacks the communal impulse and does not fit in with any social group… Of course, I do belong to certain online groups, such as this august body! But back to Mods v. Rockers – what I do appreciate from both camps is the music – Paul Weller and the Style Council, The Kinks on the one hand and Deep Purple and Meatloaf on the other. So I don’t know if that answers your question, Clark…
8. The heatwave is over 31.5 C in the living room is too much!
9.- My cyanotrope prints and lino prints which I also intend to do, give me a much less arduous source of postcards for the Poetry Postcard Festival which begins in early July and runs to end of August. Last year saw me making original postcard-sized paintings for the 31 recipients, which was a welcome return to painting but a lot of work. It is interesting to make and give away original art that you havent’t lived with for a while – teaches the Zen of non-attachment… You can see last years efforts here. And if you fancy having a go at the Poetry Postcard Festival – its not to late to sign up here.
10.- Managed to complete anothe week’s 10 grats…
Have a great week y’all – hope you have the weather you desire or need…
Hush was a breakthrough song for Deep Purple and on one level it is a pop song with catchy lyrics but underneth is a throbbing, driving energy that can scarcely be contained…
1. – We managed a day out to Hebden Bridge where we stopped at our regular coffee shop and managed to fill in all the obvious words in the Daily Mail Saturday mega crossword whic h required ongoing coaxing and focus to achieve. the Daily Mail is an obnoxious tabloid rag but we buy it only for the crossword – the rest goes straight to the outside lavatory for toilet paper ) or would if we had one…) I didn’t take any pictures except this one to illustrate how steep the town is at its fringes – follow that road up – it must reach 1:3…
2.- I have been preparing for two new hobbies bookbinding – I have some volumes that are precious but in need of some repairs – and cyanotrope print making – as always, as soon a s you watch one video of something on Facebook, your feed is flooded with them! I sent for a book on bookbinding and as my friend Akua is running a Mini-book exchange of Speculative Poetry books, my first attempt is a concertina fold miniature book containing a single poem…
Everything is miniature except for the bow since I can’t tie one smaller than this!
One down – two to go…
3.- Cyanotropes prints are made by coating paper or fabric with special chemicals (which I have now ordered) – placing plants, feathers, stencils or negatives onto the prepared sheet and exposing it to sunlight (ultra-violet) and once washed, the exposed areas turn dark blue. As a young teen, our neighbour’s son, who was doing a PhD in chemistry, made up a chemistry set although he didn’t follow through with any experiments to do! I managed to spill on e clear liquid on my bedroom carpet and to my horror, it turned into an ever darkening stain – I have reason to believe that this was one and the same chemical… I used to have a large flower press when we lived in Ireland but abandonded the wooden bits when we moved back, but kept the threaded rods and so to furnish materials for the cyanotrope prints, I have cut some new pieces of wood and on the way back from Hebden Bridge, picked some bits and pieces to press – watch this space…
4.- In one of the living room (upstairs) windows, is a Yucca plant which has grown evermore contorted as it fills the available space and last year, I had to remove a branch which was growing into the room, spindily from lack of light. I cut it up and planted the lengths in pots from which I got two successful takes.
The two babies are shown below, however, growing in the foreground pot, is a vigorous “weed” called Creeping Wood Sorrel. I showed you some of my windowsill gardens before and in one of them, which my late sister planted, was this self same plant. It has trefoil leaves like clover and whilst the plants in the office are spindly from lack of water (the rest of the garden are drought tolerant succulents) nevertheless, it not only returns each year but displays an astonishing trick. Once the minute seed pods are ready. the fling out their seeds – explosively – and we find them not only coating the windowsill but stuck to the paintwork 2 and a half feet above.
The wonders of Nature know no bounds…
5.- Evidence of our English eccentricity, below is a scooter belonging to a neighbour just around the corner. If you are English, you will recognise this pimped up scooter as as the preferred mode of transport of the “Mods” – “celebrated” in the film Quadrophenia which features the music of The Who…
Apparently the Mods are still alive and well and at least one lives round the corner…
6.- Our run of rainy weather has been replaced with another heatwave – it will reach 30°C on Wednesday…
7. My beloved New Jersey based writing group is taking its Summer break after tomorrow but that will let me type up some of the pieces before the Autumn as well as have time to do the Poetry Postcard Festival in August – if you are interested in sending 31 spontaneous postcard poems to strangers (and receiving 31 back) you can sign up here.
8.- Glad to see the numbers at this here TToT are rising and enjoying the new contributors of gratitude…
9.- Glad for my health…
10.- Glad to feel, as my friend Akua says by way of a signature expression “Joy in the Making”…
Grateful to keep my hand in with surveying and drawing up buildings. My boss met a fellow Pakistani entrepreneur whilst on a recent business trip to China (Its a small world) and we went to Bolton for me to draw it up with a view to creating a self-storage warehouse…
I had to take Barbara for a blood-test in Skipton and thefar bank of the stream which runs past the surgery, was lined with Angelica. I love the sweet, herbal taste of Angelica. I once infused some stem and some Fennel heads in gin – a great success… Angelica, whilst not rare, is rarely seen in such profusion hereabouts…
And also at the peak of its blossom this week, is Elderflower. I remember my parents attempting to make Elderflower Champagne but every bottle exploded…
I have not shared a texture photo for a while but I happened upon a sleeping dragon and quietly photographed its scales!
Truthfully, it was a car front grille that caught my eye in the supermarket car park and an amuse buoche, as I crouched to take the phote, a woman leaped out of the driver’s door asking what was wrong – I hadn’t noticed the two women sitting chatting inside lol…
After the blood test, Barbara and I drove to our son’s house in Leeds to deliver an important medical letter (he is still registered at our surgery so his post comes here) – it was raining as it has all month and so harly suitable for an outdoor coffee (outside for smoking unfortunately) but unwilling to drive staight home, we made ourselves post-men. It was a two-hour round trip so I put mt Spotify on to entertain us, and more than once, i found myself tearing up at the tracks that shuffled on. The first time I found myself unable to sing a song (accompanied by my ukulele), was Elvis Presley’s In the Ghetto – both the sincerity of Elvis’ delivery and the nature of the song made it impossible for me to sing it. On our trip to Leeds, on e tearing up was The Walking Song – paean to friendship by the late Kate McGarrigle and her sister Anna. The other was Strange Fruit – the Nina Simone cover, although Billie Holiday’s original is equally if not more powerful.
It occurred to me, that this tearing up is a form of gratitude – for the life and musical contribution of a singer no longer with us, or for a deep sentiment painfully articulated…
A pen-pal of mine wrote a poem for her acquaintance, the late, great Sonny Rollins which you can find here…
On which note I wish you all a safe and happy week…
Misky’s series of poems The Old Woman With No Cat which always makes me smile if not laugh out loud – the entire series is available to read here: The Old Woman With No Cat.
I have come to the top of the waiting list for a partial lower denture courtesy of the student dentists at Leeds Dental Hospital. I have been a volunteer patient for the students on and off since 2015 and have passed through the hands of about 5 or 6 generations of studnts. Treatment is free bar your dedication to turning up every other week for a whole morning or afternoon. I enjoy the contact with this age group, the free treatment up to and including, crowns, bridges, and now a denture. I also enjoy popping into the Leeds Art Gallery and taking a look at som favourite paintings.
I hope I haven’t shown you this before, but it is a large painting (c 9′ x 5′) of a Norwegian fiord and both the painting and the subject are stupendous…
4. I am grateful that before the age of photography, painters recorded scenes of historical significance – even if they had to employ considerable imagination. The painting below tells a sad tale form the days of the infamous British Empire and yet another ill-fated attempt to control Afghanistan. You can read the story below…
5. Summer is the time for nature in all ots fecundity and I offer a selection of “weeds” which have caught my eye this week…
I don’t know what these purple “weeds” are but one man’s weeds are another man’s flowers…
Albrecht Durer painted a littlr watercolour of a “foot of grass” and in this tribute, you can see how many plants have colonised what began as planted grass – clover, dandelions, buttercups, and I can see at least two species of grass and i don’t know what else…
This is no weed except by virtue of its growing in the wrong place – it is, I think, Wheat!
Some people take no care of their front urban “gardens” except to clear all vegetation from them periodically, but here, Blackberry runners are eagerly racing out in all directions from a tiny diamond of bare earth…
6. My weather app says expect Saturday to be the first rain-free day – AND ITS SUNDAY!!! Still, gratefull not to have to be watering the garden.
7. Grateful that biting the bullet and paying for a continuous blood monitoring device has brought my diabetes under better control…
8. Ten Things of Thankful…
9. The sun has just come out…
10. Something that is on the tip of my tongue…
Have a great week, everybody – stay safe and healthy!
We managed to get out on two of my non-working days this last week! Barbara’s COPD caused us to buy a “boot-scooter” before our holiday in Holland as without it, she would be too breathless to go anywhere and we were determined to keep up the momentum of days out. So on Friday, we went to Knaresborough, about 45 minutes’ drive and I duly unloaded the scooter (it separates into a number of components without which it would take two people to lift it out) and we set off for the round of favourite spots. After the Crystal shop, we went to the square for a coffee (see below). all was well until we were ready to move on whereupon we simply could not find the ignition key to the scooter – searched high and low – gone – complete mystery! I had to push the scooter back to the car… Where’s the grat in that you may ask? Well, it turns out that for this make of scooter, all units have the same key, so I was able to purchase a new one the next day, from the local supplier. I said to Gavin – “Doesn’t that mean that anyone could take it easily?”, “Well,” he said, “the incidence of crime amongst the disability scooter community is very low -in the 20 years I have been dealing with them, I have known of only two thefts – one of our forecourt and one in which the purchaser of the stolen scooter came in to buy a charger and we were able to reunite the scooter with the owner!”
In Knaresborough with the scooter…
On my way to purchase the spare key, I drove the scenic route over the top as it was a lovely day and stopped to take this picture of our village, Silsden, more or less in its entirety… As you can see, we are in Buttercup season!
Then on Sunday, we went to Hebden Bridge, which I have shown you something of before, but there is always something new to notice there…
These bands bearing spheres slowly rotate on a vertical axis, rather like electrons in an atom so that the clock never looks quite the same…
These Alliums are a favourite in municipal gardens and they look so good in a massed display at this time of year…
This lady is always in the square in Hebden Bridge – all weekend! She has advocated for the Palestinian cause for many years prior to the current genocide and given the current Labour government’s disgusting attempt to repress support for Palestinians in favour of the zionist occupiers, this lady risks arrest for waving the flag. Mind you, if the police tried to arrest her, they would instigate a flash-protest-mob and so probably know to leave well alone…
Hebden Bridge is nestled into a valley so steep that it is fit only for trees and you wouldn’t want to live there if you couldn’t master the steep streets…
Before the industrial revolution and the advent of large mills, weaving was a cottage industry and weavers’ workshops were on the first floors with long rows of windows to give the maximum light to work by. This one is now a café but you can see the rough-hewn stone work of the windows…
A magnificent climbing rose on the Hebden Bridge Arts Centre…
Lastly, we are having a heatwave and I took the redundant heating controller outside to record this temperature in the shade! The grat is that we don’t have a hosepipe ban as yet, this year…
I hope you are all having whatever weather it is that you need or desire and that you are all having your most gratifying week possible…
