Fig tree leaves

Our fig tree that grows alongside the house is well sheltered and has got rather tall this year. The leaves are really big and are just starting to fall off. The one on the ground still looks healthy and green. The laurel bush is towering over everything and really needs cutting back but we don’t have the skills or the strength to do it.

So all in all the garden is thriving. We need to maintain it bit it’s our wild haven. I will maybe post more photos as the year turns.

Antiques are green!

A old wooden cupboard, but much greener than a modern one. Probably manufactured without much machinery. Transported to a shop on a horse and cart. The wood its made of must be 100 years old. It isn’t damaging rain forests now. Apparently an old chest of draws has a 16X smaller carbon footprint than its modern equivalent.

By buying old furniture which has stood the test of time you are recycling something that still had a use. I suppose if you don’t like brown furniture you could upcycle it… But that cupboard might just be worth something, so don’t sand it down and paint it if you aren’t sure of its provinance.

Waterbird

Silhouette of a waterbird taken a couple of days ago on a walk round Westport Lake. I liked the way the small rock in the water looks like a birds head with a beak. It made me look twice because the actual birds head was looking forwards, towards me. It does give the illusion that the head is turned in profile in the reflection.

wet water bird

waiting in the drizzle

reflected sorrow

for a little food

your mind stretches

to a new tomorrow

where sun follows rain

and warmth

replaces shivers

Branches

Pattern made from four duplicated photos of autumn trees. When the leaves fall and disintegrate they get taken down into the soil by worms or are eaten by insects, or lie as a mulch on the soil surface helping keep it warm. Hedgehogs and other small mammals hide underneath them keeping warm and out of the cold wind.

I do wonder if the soil level would gradually build up as leaves fall year after year. Is this what biomass is? It’s funny what you think about trees….

Fern leaves

I can’t remember how I got this image, I know it’s based on a photo of fern leaves and I must have used layout to mirror the patterns. But how I added the various colours and added the tiles? I can’t remember. And just how did I get the embossed effect…. It must have been an app I no longer have on my phone. A puzzle, which is what the image looks like.

Strange eyes

According to scientific research symmetrical features are supposed to make people more handsome or pretty.

As an experiment I took a photo of someone’s eye then mirrored it. I tried to get the right width for the bridge of the nose. I have to say this looks strange. He does have uneven eyes in reality, with one obviously higher than the other.

The only other example of this I have seen was with a photo of Edgar Allen Poe. He has a very unsymmetric face and as with this experiment if you mirror the opposite sides the faces that result are truly weird, at least to me.