Splodgy skies

More boring splodgy night skies. The white line is the moon, just shows how bad my camera shake is! 60 second exposures, went from greenish to slight pink to blue. So maybe there will be better views outside the city?

I’m afraid I’m getting a bit obsessed with the Aurora Borealis. But since we are still in a stream of particles from the sun I might as well try and take pictures when I can. The next solar maximum is in 22 years and I might not be around to see that. Sorry these pictures don’t show amazing structures but I’m pleased just to get the colours here in the middle of a city, x

Spooky lights

I saw this at tonight’s performance and it made me chuckle. The way the lights are set up looks like eyes and a mouth. The shadow above like a set of long wolf like ears! The pinkness is really dramatic.

I have always seen faces and patterns in everyday shapes. Like paintings of flowers that look like lions to me, or the spindly abstract pattern of tree branches turning into a galloping horse. It’s a phenomenon called Pareidolia.

This could also be a riotous robot, a frankenstein style monster, or a dancing ghost, see what I mean?

Low sky

Outside our back door this evening. The sky looked pinker than this to my eyes, but I have to go with what the camera shows. Out anemometer on the weather station was spinning round merrily in the gusty wind (it was almost a dark and stormy evening!) it’s not linked in with the station in the house as the batteries are dead! I do like the salmon pink sky. I wish we lived on the sunny side of the hill.

Acer colour

Photo from a couple of weeks ago, pinky red leaves on this Acer (Japanese Maple) shine out with brightness on a dull day. I saw this in a churchyard and just had to take a picture of it. The green coloured chlorophyll has been absorbed back into the main part of the plant and xanthophyll carotanoids and antoxcyanines remain (spellings might be wrong).

Some countries have more colour changes than in the UK. I guess our species tend towards yellows, oranges and browns as opposed to reds. I’d love to see a really spectacular autumn (fall).

Rhododendrons are lovely

But they don’t last long. The huge clusters of blooms soon brown and fade. They are great at the right time of the year, but then they are just big green bushes and they need underplanting to make them look more interesting. Here there are wild buttercups and ferns which were just growing below the rhododendrons. Mostly they shade out other plants and in some places they are cut back and removed because they are not native to the UK and they can spread and can be invasive. The shade they cast stops native saplings growing.

White hydrangea

Hydrangea Macoropholia

I said we had got a white hydrangea a few days ago but it’s only just beginning to flower. It’s still in a pot, and looking closely it seems to be a very pale pink.

We had one a couple of years ago with conical instead of flat flower heads. But because it was very shady in the garden it didn’t thrive. That’s why this one is in its pot-so we can move it around… Anyway I think its lovely X.

Hydrangea blue

The bracts are developing to a purple blue. Such a lovely plant. It’s sitting in the yard but I think we will move it towards the house so it gets more light. I remember my grandmother having a hydrangea but hers was pink. I painted a portrait of her in front of it years ago. It grew in a big pot under the living room window. Just seeing this brings back memories of a strong and forthright woman. She knew what she thought and what she wanted.