jules' pics

Sunday, August 9, 2015

garden

Almost a year since we completed on our house in Settle. The garden is a bit over-occupied. Being not that large and yet with 5 woodland trees it has an almost continuous canopy to offset its unremittingly sunny aspect. It is similarly full of flowers. They are mostly new to me so I have been mostly just watching them this year. I think the previous people planted a lot of stuff, and there could also a villageurbia effect of things escaping from nearby gardens.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Baaaa!

Lake District Lamb.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Lovely James

awww, i'n't 'ee sweeet?

In photos on the internets, James makes most things look smaller than they are, because he is larger than you think, but maybe the little hill behind James was once a big mountain, before the glaciers scraped most of it away. It is fun to ride by bicycle as the track starts at a gentle slope and gets gradually steeper and steeper almost all the way up.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Englefield v Myohoji

Englefield seems to date from the mid 1500s, and Myohoji goes back to the 1200s. How much of which buildings may be "original" is another question, of course...

Anyway... in 2010, I blogged the Deva gate and famous moss steps at Myohoji.

Both places have a large number of trees, but at Englefield I found no red gate with protective angry monsters - there was just a little metal gate with an "honesty box", into which you are expected to put 6 quid. In November I expect you'd feel more moved to put in about tuppence, and with no red monsters to chase you down, why not? However, to make up for this lack of impressive gate-ness, the main building is very grand and the landscaped garden very large.

Oh look - a Japanese maple!
But the thing that really caused me to think of Myohoji was, of course, the daisy staircase.

Myohoji's moss steps repeated for those who can't click links back as far as 2010

Clearly Englefield need to grow more steps to make it proper zen, but there is potential, for example with the correct ferniness at bottom right hand side.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Parking

I've been missing Starbucks Parking on Sundays. In fact I've been missing all the colourful, shiny, expensive and overpowered cars of Kamakura and Yokohama. Here it is mostly Land Rovers with dogs in the back, Quad Bikes with dogs on the steering wheel, and Caravans full of dogs and holiday makers. But then last Sunday there appeared, just down the road at Falcon Manor...

woo hoo!

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Our garden

Almost everything in our garden is doing flowering at the moment. It is the British way, to bloom in May and June and hibernate the rest of the year.

Monday, May 11, 2015

The prodigal cat

Oh noes. He's back!

Apparently, Riley the cat has too much character, and his new owners gave him back after less than a week. So, on return from Vienna we had to go and pick him up again. However, Riley is so much trouble, that I begged for another cat to distract him. The rescue woman suggested Blackie, a probably older and definitely much calmer creature of similarly large stature. It's worked pretty well so far, although Blackie, a scraggy stray when he arrived with us, seems to be getting rather sleek and fat. He does have a very different temperament to Riley. He does nothing much all day apart from doing purring while being stroked. He also has been trying to teach Riley to be more of a gentleman. While that may not be working our that well, he does at least occupy some of Riley's time, and the two now seem to be quite good friends. So now both cats are advertised together on the rescue website. Hope they find a home soon!

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Vienna

We went to the EGU in Vienna last month. I've already published my photos on postcards to relatives, via Touchnote, so the desire to blog them was less urgent.

Not being anymore bound by Japanese rules, which do not permit one to stay away form work a minute longer than necessary, we had no need to bunk off and go touristing during the conference, and instead took an extra day post-EGU. Having visited quite a few times before, we didn't feel the need to visit lots of museums and galleries, although we did manage a performance of Mozart's Requiem, in the wild vibrational acoustic of Karlskirche. So, on Saturday morning we just wandered around the city.

Stephansdom, the church in the middle of town has been undergoing major works for years. This tower was under wraps when we visited 2 years ago, and even now the lower part of it is still covered.