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Beautiful brickwork

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I don’t know much about bricks, except that they are fired clay. But I do like to see them when they are used decoratively. The way they are laid is called the ‘bond’ where it depends whether they are laid horizontally across the surface of the wall, or with the short end showing on the face of the wall and the length turned 90° so that the brick is across into the layer behind or allows the wall to turn the corner at the edge of the building.

As you can see from this photo, different coloured bricks are often used to make patterns and shapes in the brickwork or are used to frame tiled areas of text stating when the building was built.

I also know that brick sizes changed over time. That they were smaller in the past and hand made. Then molds were made and the brick sizes became standardised. I don’t know all the history of that sorry.

Spectrum

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White light

Split into colours

Created by sunlight

Rainbows glow

Chemicals create different colours, sodium used in street lights glows yellow. Chemicals are used in fireworks, like strontium (red?) or copper green, creating different colours, blues, purples, oranges.

The reason sunlight is made up of a spectrum is because the sun is made not only of hydrogen and helium but all the chemicals in the periodic table up to iron (any chemicals beyond that can only be created in Super Novae explosions). All the chemicals in the sun glow in different colours, which is why they show up when the white light from the sun passed through a prism. If you split the spectrum further you can find dark lines, these are markers of which chemicals are present. The older the star the more chemicals. As a star gets older it starts to burn up its hydrogen and helium. New chemicals are created by atoms fusing together. That’s where new chemicals are made. When you think about it, if it wasn’t for stars burning or exploding we couldn’t exist.

Hubby pulling out long nails

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This was hubby at the allotment today, using a long crowbar to help pull out very long nails from rotten wood surrounding old raised beds today.

Some of the nails were eighteen inches to two foot long!

Can’t explain why he’s wearing shorts and a long coat. His head is bent over as he doesn’t have a visor on his motorbike helmet. Why he’s wearing it? I also don’t know. He came home tired and happy! By the way I miss heard him when he came in. He said he’d been working with ‘vast nails’, I thought he said ‘fast snails’

🤣

I thought I would combine the two photos. It looks like he is levering up the world!

Home made sausage rolls

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If you don’t eat meat or wheat read no further (or substitute gluten free and meat free).

I wanted to use up some shop bought short crust pastry and some small sausages.

I baked four small sausages in the oven, gas mark 6 about 15 minutes. I let them cool slightly and got the left over pastry out the fridge. I pressed lots of off cuts of pastry togethef with a larger piece so that I ended up with a large-ish oblong. Then I placed two sausages together onto the pastry at one end and the other two at the other end. I folder the pastry over and sealed it by pressing it together. I used a bit of milk to glaze the top. There was a small bit of pastry left over so I wrapped that around some bits of cheddar cheese.

I cooked the sausage rolls for twenty minutes on gas mark 6. The rolls had started to brown. I put them back on for another five minutes.

When I took them out they were cooked on top but a bit soft underneath. I think this was because there was still a bit of fat coming out of the sausages?

The resulting rolls were tasty but I wish I had used shop bought flakey pastry instead.

Today’s sketching prompt ‘ceramic’

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Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt is ceramic. This is my brown ‘Bessie’ or ‘Betty’ tea pot and a couple of mugs of tea. One of which has the Penkhull Flag on it.

The shadow at the bottom was from my head as I stood and drew in the sunny kitchen. It was just going to be ink and pencil, then I thought why not add colour? It’s a sketch rather than a neat drawing. Hope you like.

Garden colours

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Seeing the garden in October, looking at the flowers, seeing the leaf shapes. Enjoyment, colours, shapes. Pattern, design, life, waiting for them to wilt, fade, droop. Waiting for their end of days. Taking photos, keeping a record, remembering beauty. Time to grow, time to leave. Time to fall, time to die. Wind chimes and wind sculptures, wild and colourful. Hanging in baskets, pots and fences. Cram packed with joy.

Morning glory flower

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They are just about hanging on, and starting to develop flowers! The rains coming down most days and is starting to soak the soil too much. If we get a frost it’s going to destroy all the plant cells, and then, no more tender plants like these. The thing I’ve learned? Plant the seeds a month earlier, get them warm and germinating and get them out in the sun a month earlier too.

Noises in the garden and the shed.

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Snuffling, rushing past, got me rattled. Some sort of noise being created by a thing out in the garden. But the gates locked and the sheds shut. Bowls are rattled, things clash, is it the wind, a burglar, a rat, or a hedgehog? I guess hedgehog…. They like standing on the edges of their bowls to get at the cat food we put out for them. Not sure about the rushing past though? I think it’s the cat doing that…. Anyway we had a good walk round in the rain and the dark… Nothing dangerous seen… Maybe we’ve got badgers?…..