Flower-Arranging

I'm not usually very interested in flower-arranging. It's not that I'm uninterested, I'm just not interested. But, I've been doing some Andy Goldsworthy-inspired arrangements of nature. Above are my shoddy pastiches of Goldsworthy's work –below– which is brilliant and exciting.

                       

                       

                       

And of course this set me googling, and I found this bizarre and rather wonderful video. Enjoy!

Nature

Just some lovely old nature to get you through your day. Go outside. Feel the weather. Look at trees or bugs or rain.

The Secrets of Nature

This video is absolutely brilliant. It has beautiful footage of gnat larvae, sweet badger cubs, and a very  narrator full of funny phrases; 'What's a chap to do?'.

Bugs

Hey there, here are some bugs: a wasp and a ladybird. You know I love a good insect. And so I've also been looking through my Nature Encyclopedia, and have found out that:

-There are over 150,000 species of bees and wasps.

-Most wasp women have an egg-laying tube called an ovipositor. It can drill through wood and deposit the eggs inside, as this is safer. In parasitic species this can also be used to bore the host animal's skin. And in some, the ovipositor has evolved into the insect's sting. 

Lovely.

Pigeons

I found some photographs of pigeons, which I took a while back. I then started thinking about them. They are like opals. 

And I found out a fact or two about pigeons. Apparently the reason that they bob their heads is for depth perception. I have no idea if that's true, but it's so fab that I had to include it. Also they are among the most intelligent birds on the planet, apparently. Pretty interesting.

Sweet summer

Autumn is beautiful and golden and grey, full of rosy cheeks and melancholy. But I'm feeling a little nostalgic about clean, bright summer. Years seem so natural, but also very strange. I don't know.

Autumn

This image, by Vasile Dobrian, is entitled Where the Autumn has Passed it all Becomes Dust. The Image, and the title, made me think.

Autumn

I can definitely sense the autumn in the air today and it is beautiful. Blue skies, crumpling leaves, misty mornings, cold faces. To capture the essence of autumn here, I have chosen three pieces. From left to right they are: M.C.Escher's Three Worlds, Egon Schiele's A Tree in Late Autumn (1911) and Georges Seurat's The Eiffel Tower (1889). 

Dog man

I know this is a bad photo, but it's not often that you see a dog carrying a plastic bag ( Is it his poo in there?) and so I had to share it with you.

Lavender's Blue 

Lavender's Blue Dilly-Dilly,
Lavender's Green,
When I am King Dilly-Dilly
You shall be Queen

Finding this photograph, which I took during the summer, inspired me to find out more about the history and uses of lavender. In fact, the word has an extraordinary etymology. And to find out about lavender harvest, I watched this video.