Just back from Florence

This view is the reward you get for climbing the 463 steps to the top of the Duomo!




Food market - full of wonderful, delicious sights and smells. I wanted to stay by the fresh vegetables and salad stall just to inhale the wonderful freshness of it all but was dragged away by my companion who said that she wasn't sure about Italian laws on loitering with intent - even if the intent were to enjoy!



This photo illustrates one of the things I love so much about Florence...small corners like this which reveal tranquil, magical scenes......



.....glorious incongruity....



.....the characters....



.....the glamour...



...the magic. Can't wait to return!

God is in.....

Have just discovered Beth Nielsen Chapman's beautiful CD 'Prism'. The first track is a called 'God Is In' (Goddess In)......which is really a sung list of all the things that the writers believe God is in.....here is a short photographic list based on 'God is in'....

So fed up with January

Fed up with the weather, the constant rain, the dark mornings and dark afternoons - but just look at the sky....I think it comes in the category '...every cloud has a silver lining...' or in this case 'golden!'

just messing about.....

Can't resist playing with images.....
The first image is of a derelict building in the Potteries. I think that it has a wonderful atmospheric quality about it. I want to create a fabric panel basd on this sometime.

The second image is a beautiful dry stone wall in Derbyshire captured at sunset.

The last image was taken on a walk in the hills in Cheshire on the borders of Derbyshire.

The ink is black, the page is white...........

What a fabulous image....a road inviting us to walk round the next corner and what will we find?




Somewhere to rest and enjoy the view....

Faces of Grief

Faces of Grief

unable to sleep

I woke in the early hours of this morning and, unable to get back to sleep, I switched on the radio and listened to the World Service. There happened to be a programme about the blogs of soldiers serving in Iraq. The presenter urged listeners to click onto these blogs....I did so and came accross 'faces of grief'. As I write this my face is still wet with the tears which I shed whilst reluctantly scrolling down the blog. The images are shocking. I feel entirely helpless. I know that the answer to this hell on earth is not as simple as 'please put a stop to it all now'. If you happen to read my blog I urge you to look at 'faces of grief'.

Skating on thin ice.....

Yesterday I saw the ducks and gulls skidding about on the icy pond in the park. I wanted to rush home and knit socks for them but decided against it for fear of being cautioned by those very nice community police who cycle round our park to protect the locals from women who want to force the feet of unsuspecting wildlife into warm footwear!

Sunset....

Winter Landscape

The setting sun touches the top of the mossy walls turning the landscape into an enchanting place where magical things happen.

SKIRMISH

a piece of irregular or unpremeditated fighting....a slight engagenent!!!

Many angles

Movement, objects, speech, and words :
We communicate through gross symbols.
We call them "objective,"
But we cannot escape our point of view.

Delicious Autumn

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot

England in Autumn

As days grow shorter, and nights grow longer and cooler, biochemical processes in the leaf begin to paint the landscape with Nature's autumn palette.





Needles and leaves that fall are not wasted. They decompose and restock the soil with nutrients and make up part of the spongy humus layer of the forest floor that absorbs and holds rainfall. Fallen leaves also become food for numerous soil organisms vital to the forest ecosystem.

It is quite easy to see the benefit to the tree of its annual leaf fall, but the advantage to the entire forest is more subtle. It could well be that the forest could no more survive without its annual replenishment from leaves than the individual tree could survive without shedding these leaves.



Do look at the following site for scientific stuff about Autumn.
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/misc/leaves/leaves.htm

Scene in the park this morning....

I could not believe my eyes when I spotted this heron in the park....I am so cross that the pic is blurred - I hope to see him (her?) again and take a better pic soon.

Silent, soft and slow.....

One of the memories from my childhood is of waking up on a winter’s morning and knowing that something had changed since I went to sleep. The bedroom was lighter and the world quieter – much quieter. The snow had fallen – silent, soft and slow. If I could make an appeal to those who have it within their power to change something in our environment it would be for a quieter world....a world in which noise pollution becomes a serious offence...a world in which motorists do not play their car sound systems at ‘ballistic’.....a world in which the sound system in the cinema is not so loud that you cannot hear the dialogue.....a world in which....I had better stop at this point for fear of turning this blog into a rant.
This entry was written to support blog action day.

Nature's art.....

"The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.” Pablo Picasso

Autumn in the park

Autumn flames



A feast for the birds.



Crab apple weeping - with laughter I hope!

Wandering though Florence we saw......

Temptation coloured red!



A famous character in disguise



Glorious colours


This little shop tucked away in a square - it could easily have been missed. I'm so glad we found it - it sold the most delicious soaps and handcream.


We saw this bride and her groom - it was lovely to see them walking hand in hand, their future, unknown, stretching before them but for that moment happy and carefree.


I love Florence with a passion - everything about it - even the graffitti. The colours, buildings, narrow streets, fabulous window displays - not to mention the art and architecture and the food and the wine. Hope you enjoy this small taste of my favourite place in the whole world.